SCPantera's Dream Journal

I had a very bizarre dream that I'm compelled to document. It wasn't quite lucid, but...well, read on.

Early as I can remember, I was in heaven in what looked like a cross between a mall and a cathedral. It was very crowded. By chance I found the man who had murdered me in heaven also. I declared that I was going to kill him (smite his soul or whatever) and that the Angel of Vengeance was on my side. After this short monologue I was about to attack the guy, but before I could do anything he stabbed me, killing me. After a short delay I was reborn as an angel of vengeance, called a One (Something--I can't quite recall what, it wasn't "Winged", I think it started with an M) Angel, and not just one--it seems as I had spawned as a squad of armed angels. It seems that this rebirth had taken some time, since after returning the man had been long gone. I searched heaven looking for the man but could not find him. Instead I returned to Earth and, running out of patience, I began to kill anyone who looked like the guy (from the start of the fight to here, the dream passed as some sort of weird top-down camera strategy RPG). It seems that to end my rampage I was returned to Earth with no memory except the name "One (Whatever) Angel". The dream then seemed to follow me on a search to find out what this name meant. I began by asking clergy or people who seemed religious; they all either straight-faced denied that they exist or looked at me in shock and horror and told me to get away from them. As my search went on with no answers I began just asking random strangers (my search took me to a drink stand just as it was closing in what was some in-dream deja vu, as I'd recognized this even from a deep early part of the dream that I don't now remember). Early on in my search I'd come across a girl who had overheard me asking questions at some point and had taken an interest in me. She eventually explained to me that she could help me remember everything through a process that involved dreams (vaguely Inception-style); I seemed to have a vague understanding of this process already and was firmly against it for a while. As time went on and my search for answers grew more desperate I eventually agreed to try it. It was to take place in what looked like some sort of park. As I entered, I came in behind an old, black lady accompanied by a young child. I recognized the old lady as someone I had previously asked about the angel who was disturbed by my question. The child stopped ahead of her and turned around, he asked, "Are you sure you want to do this? It could be the last time..." to which the old lady responded with something about helping these troubled young folk. I followed them to where the girl was waiting for us (I'm going to give her the name Ashley, it seems to fit my memory). In addition to the old, black woman (let's call her Oracle, since she looked like the latter version from the Matrix), Jon Voight was (apparently) helping us. They explained that Ashley would have to sit/lay on top of me in order to merge our dreams and gave me a large bag to put over my butt since apparently the process had several unpleasant side effects (supposedly most people shat themselves upon coming out of it). I sat down on a bench and they gave me some sort of injection and then immediately I was in the back (left) seat of a car, with Ashley sitting to my left, the others in the front (Jon Voight driving). I explained to them that I was once an oneironaught myself and briefly described my first lucid dream. As if to reply and boast of his own lucid dreaming skill, Jon Voight turned his head into an inflated version of Ashley's head. We all laughed, but I noticed that the situation was rather strange so I did a reality check that failed. I quickly exclaimed, "Holy shit, we're dreaming already! That's amazing." Then I looked over at Ashley, who was looking at me also, however she appeared out of it or drunk. I noted here that despite the reality check failing I didn't seem to be able to exert any lucid control; at the time I attributed this to the process occurring in the overarching dream storyline but now that I think about it after the fact it seemed kind of weird. At this point I had a very brief false awakening (I only remember because I awoke to a lit room before actually awakening) which was followed quickly by an actual awakening.

I'm not going to count this among my lucid dreams being as it fit into the context of the dream that my reality check would fail (maybe this also explains my apparent lack of dream control). It was a curious experience. I'm a little disappointed I didn't get to see the end to my search for answers.

As any astute follower of this journal would notice, I haven't quite followed through on my recent resolution to resume dream documentation, however I do like to come back to this journal time to time to document particularly notable dreams (eg the previous post). The following is actually a dream I had a few nights ago and have been toying with the idea of writing down; it was a very haunting, powerful experience that I keep thinking about again and again.

The overarching premise of the dream was that I was dead somehow and in heaven. I want to say that the earliest part of the sequence was me living ordinarily in an area that seemed to be a common room with a bunch of offshoot dwelling rooms adjacent to a hallway that led directly to a hospital where I worked (I'll get into more detail in describing both later on), but I also suspect these may be memories within the dream (I'll clarify this later as well). Anyways, the earliest clear part of this dream took place as I somehow came to be outside the gates of heaven. I was apparently well aware of a conspiracy to keep people out of heaven, and that the primary methodology of this conspiracy was a complex maze system outside heaven's gate with a long line of people that were queued to enter heaven, and it was so constructed so as to keep people trapped, slowly moving nowhere in circles. I was at first able to see a narrative overview of this maze; people in single file line, slowly shuffling forward, many branches and loops ensuring that the people (who seemed completely ignorant of their situation and complacently moved along) were trapped. There were "employees" who seemed to be party to the conspiracy directing the flow of the lines so as to maintain things. As it were, I was just near what I knew to be the actual, true entrance to heaven, which was blocked off and guarded by a line of "employees". As I stood there trying to determine how I was going to get back in, I by chance noticed a bellboy carrying a platter of dirty dishes (I seemed to understand they delivered food to people in line). I watched as he entered an adjacent hallway marked employees only. It was unguarded, so I looked down the hallway; it was tall and wide and reminiscent of the grand hallways at a hotel convention center. The hallway went a long ways back before ending in a group of employee rooms (I assumed one of them must be a kitchen), but I also noticed a hallway branched off to the right some distance down. I looked to my right now towards the entrance to heaven and noticed another hallway opened on the other side of the line of sentries, so I decided I'd try to sneak through that way. I happened to have my messenger bag with me, so I decided I'd pretend to be a writer. I began to walk quickly down the hallway, repeating the phrase, "I'm a writer" constantly in my head as though I thought it would somehow prevent me from being caught. As I turned the corner to the right, I found that the hallway continued for some time before coming to another hallway parallel to the first. I turned another right and headed towards the exit. As I continued down this hallway I came upon a black man in a suit who waved at me in a friendly way and offered to shake my hand. As I shook his hand I only said, "I'm a writer" and then kept walking; as I passed him I could see the look of confusion on his face. I seemed to understand that he wasn't a guard, but that his job was to simply stand there and greet people. I exited the hallway into the hospital area (note this was not the area I'd seen from the other side of heaven's gate previously), which was comprised of square rooms, all hallways, some of which resembled normal hospital hallways and some of which resembled patient rooms with through paths. I knew my way back from here by memory; from the hallway square at the exit of the hallway I turned right into a room square, then left through three more squares and then right to the exit of the hospital area into my living area I'd mentioned previously. As I arrived, I slowly walked further into the room, examining my surroundings. Like the hospital area, the room was familiar to me as though I'd been living there for some time. There was a dining table in the middle of the room along one wall that was cluttered with papers and there was a television suspended on a thick pillar adjacent to the table. It occurred to me later that the layout of the main common room very vaguely resembled the living room at my grandma Isabel's old house in Halstad, and to that theme everything seemed dusty and slightly old as though the furniture, paint on the wall, decorations, and even the television were from the 80's. There were a number of people intently going about there business in the room also. As I examined my surroundings I became increasingly distressed with my disposition. I then lashed out verbally, asking if this was all I had left now in heaven, that I'd spend eternity trapped in this dusty room with some other people from the 1990's (a woman nearby in earshot glanced at me and rolled her eyes as she continued doing something), complaining that there wasn't even much of a proper internet yet. I continued, suddenly realizing that I was due to take the MPJE tomorrow but now couldn't because I was dead, meaning that I'd never been successfully licensed as a pharmacist and thus the last several years of my life spent training to that end was wasted. This angry diatribe was cut short by the realization that I'd left Laura behind and could not be sure when she would arrive or if she'd arrive at all (at least we'd already returned to her hometown, I hoped she'd find happiness again, etc.). In this strong emotional mix of anger and sadness I realized that my situation could not be real, but I could only think of ending the dream quickly instead of allowing it to continue post reality check and instantly managed to wake myself up.

When I fell asleep again I had a short continuation of this dream where I went to a buffet for food (I was aware I was still in heaven). The restaurant had many people but wasn't too crowded. It reminded me of the restaurant at Bill's gambling hall.

As I mentioned at the start of this entry I mentioned how haunting this dream has been the last few days. The reason for that is that afterwards I've been left with the haunting thought that I may have peered into the real heaven (a chilling thought given the "conspiracy", how drab the environment was, and my emotional observations towards the end). I don't genuinely believe this now (the fact that heaven is historically described as more paradise in nature, consideration that this may represent hell rather than heaven, and my ultimate awareness that this was a dream all heavily discount this notion), however I believe it does represent a phenomenon I referred to previously as "dream bleeding", where elements of the dream have remained strong in my consciousness long after the dream has ended.

Had two sequences I could recall, except that the latter was generic and barely memorable except that it was basically just a game of HoN.

In the former Laura and I were driving down 25th street north of main avenue at night in the rain. As we reached main avenue I somehow didn't notice the light was red until it was too late. I swerved left to avoid another vehicle but then drifted straight ahead (presumably due to the rain). As we were drifting we were hit by a very large vehicle that looked like a train heading east along main avenue and it pushed us several blocks before stopping. Laura and I got out of the car (unharmed) and called the police to report an accident. Afterwards several people got out of the train car and then proceeded to verbally abuse us at length for quite some time. I recall being frustrated that it was taking the police so long to get there, especially since I'd noticed a police car shortly before the accident.

Had another lucid-for-a-few-moments-but-lost-it episode.

It started with a longer sequence for which I only remember some. I was with a few people whom I suspect were my parents (at least one of them was my dad) and we were in a car going to what was some kind of mall/fast food restaurant combination--it had a drive through window. We ordered and picked up...something, but we forgot to order something we needed so I got out to go into the store and get it while they circled back around to pick me up. When I came out, as I got into the car my dad asked, "Do you know what 'los loco lobos' means?" to which I replied, "The crazy dog."

Cut to me sitting in a theater watching some romance movie. It featured an Asian couple from New York City. The only part of the movie I can remember was a segment where the girl went into this long-winded monologue about how her boyfriend was so awesome because he had all these manly, rugged qualities because he was such a "Minnesota man", which I recall thinking was outrageously stupid because they were both from New York City.

Cut once more to me in bed; I would wake up, my wife would tell me something, and then I'd go back to sleep. This would happen over and over. At some point she woke me up and started reciting sappy lines from the romantic movie from before, and when she did so I thought, "Oh god, I'm in a nightmare now!" semi-jokingly, then did a nose pinch reality check which failed. Had a quick "Yeah!" moment, then got up quickly (thus far I'd been thinking my last lucid slipped away because I stayed laying down) to get to work. My wife was now babbling incoherently, trying to get my attention so I waved her away since I was planning to clear out my apartment as a start to environmental control practice. I started to head to the front door of my apartment to turn on the light (since it was still dark in the room), but the dream dissolved to awakening. Reality check passed; lost it again quickly unfortunately.

It's nice that I'm still getting lucids and that they seem to be occurring with a little more frequency, but I need to find some way to stabilize them.

I just woke up, and in my half-awakening I was in a combination of frustration at my mini dry spell and thinking about news footage of Yo-Yo Ma's death. Fortunately it occurred to me that Yo-Yo Ma was neither dead nor yet elderly.

The dream apparently consisted of what seemed like security/surveillance footage of a very old Yo-Yo Ma and another old woman who was apparently his wife, overlaid with what was either my own inner monologue or some sort of news commentary (or a combination thereof). The story centered around the fact that they, both wheelchair bound and frail, had entered separate hot tubs to relax, however once they wanted to leave, nobody would help them out of the hot tub (which seemed to be just a pit in the ground with no stairs or anything to exit). Yo-Yo Ma had apparently already died from being trapped in there with no help, which was what warranted the media buzz. Most of the imagery I remember was of his wife now having the same problem. Several people were standing outside the hot tub, refusing to help the old lady out. The hot tub had been drained and her wheel chair was there. She had a younger handmaiden with her, but she too refused to help the old lady out, though she would occasionally help her back into her wheel chair.

Inspiration for this dream seems to have come partly from the fact that we were working short-staffed at the retail pharmacy I'm on rotation at now last Friday, so I was able to hijack the radio for some classical music. Sometime during the day they played Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, featuring Yo-Yo Ma. For readers who don't know who this is, Yo-Yo Ma is a Chinese cello prodigy and, while I was still a classical musician, was considered to be the greatest cello player in the world.

I have a vague memory of what may have been a larger/longer, more complex dream, but all I really have of it is the memory that it may have existed.

Edit: Added that little explanation of who Yo-Yo Ma is for the curious. Also, taking this edit opportunity to add here that following this, since it woke me up fairly early, I tried to do some WILD (this would make it attempt #3, with the previous two being during late afternoon naps) but with no measurable success. I gave up after my wife shifting around a bit broke what focus I had left and just fell asleep normally, where I put a huge dent in my "dry spell" and experienced the following entry.

A couple super short fragments last night.

First, I seem to remember a still (?) image of standing on the corner of Broadway and...whatever avenue it was outside King House/Metro Drug, looking south down Broadway.

Second, there was a short sequence where I was working in kind of a medium sized room by myself on a computer against the far wall of the room. I was at what was evidently the Meritcare/Sanford downtown hospital. I was working on some sort of project. I heard some sort of commotion outside, so I went to take a look and people were hurrying about busily as though they were getting ready to evacuate. I stopped someone to ask what was going on and they told me the company was closing this area to save money. I shrugged and went down to the ground floor to leave. After I exited, I paused to turn around and look at the building's south face. I thought, "Time Magazine is going out of business because it's unable to appeal to any demographics."

I couldn't tell you why I thought the hospital had anything to do with Time Magazine, but it's likely that the thought was inspired by this: TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Onion News Network

At first when I woke this morning I thought I only had one fragment that I'd managed to maintain, but when I was in the shower I had a bit of a revelation. Since I'd awoken this morning I'd been thinking in the back of my mind, "Crap, I cheated on my wife!" But when I was in the shower and the thought crept up I immediately realized, wait a minute, no I didn't, that was a dream! And then like floodgates a lot of missing detail from that dream came back into memory.

The fragment, which I seem to recall being first, involved having a nosebleed. Oddly, it was coming out of both nostrils. I remember looking down at my chest and the blood was flowing down in two nice neat streams that curved symmetrically sideways and then back down in sort of a Y pattern.

The earliest point I can recall of the larger sequence was parking in a parking lot on the south side of a block that would be across from my old middle school, Ben Franklin. It was night. I entered the school; inside it was dark. I went into a poorly lit room where 3 people were waiting: a female teacher of whom my memory is quite blurry, Dr. Biberdorf, and another girl whom I identified Bethany P. (though she looked more like Emily G.) and seemed to think was either a friend or colleague. We were there for some sort of awarding ceremony. At some point, a fire broke out in the building and my viewpoint switched to a sort of retro-video game 3/4 view floorplan of the building and I watched little flame icons appear where the fire was and spread. As it reached my location it went back to first person and Biberdorf yelled at us to escape. I led Bethany outside and back to the parking lot, where we paused to recover. In a bit of only-makes-sense-in-Hollywood, Bethany and I proceeded to have exasperated survivor sex, complete with Hollywood fade-out and fade-in without being able to see any of the juicy details. Afterwards I offered to drive her home. I remember driving, seeing a few intersections. She lived at a building that looked like a college building, but inside was kind of a wierd mall-with-no-shops/college dorm hybrid. We stopped at some office where she had to grab some papers and some other guys came up to me and asked me if I had sex with her. I confirmed it, smug and apparently proud, and they congratulated me. A few other students (all of them in green shirts with some small, unidentified white words on them) continued to gather and congratulate me. When she came out of the office I waved goodbye and then left. I went back to the middle school, which was again somehow intact, back to the poorly lit room. Biberdorf was still there. I started telling him everything I remembered from the dream, leaving out the sex part (for some reason even now I couldn't remember who the female teacher was), when some random black kid came in. They began discussing something quietly, when I suddenly panicked as I was thinking to myself, "Crap, I cheated on my wife!" Apparently I had thought this out loud, because Biberdorf and the black kid stopped talking and looked at me. After a short pause Biberdorf briefed me on the importance of keeping this secret. He turned to the black kid and told him that if there was ever any rumor that I had cheated on my wife that he would personally kill the kid (I realize now after the fact that this is a little silly, being as there was already a mall-with-no-shops/college dorm hybrid full of people who already knew). I think the dream ends there.

I remember two, probably related, segments, but my memory of them is a little limited so we'll see how much I can remember as I start here.

The earlier segment I can only seem to remember a few random image of. It was like some kind of futurey sandbox FPS scenario. I remember it was night for the duration of this segment, but it was that kind of movie or video game style night where it isn't really night but everything has kind of a dark blue filter over it (except where there's lighting). I remember seeing gray metal husks of tanks and fires all over streets. I was moving from place to place, destroying vehicles or robots or whatever I perceived as an opponent I guess. I'm not sure what my motivation was or what I was trying to do. I remember at one point I discovered a new way to take out some vehicles and was trying to describe it to an outpost of humans/allies but they were refusing to listen so I left them. I remember a segment where I was moving down a large bridge, with vehicle wrecks everywhere, sorta vaguely L4D2 style (only at night and no zombies).

The second segment was similar. There were two outposts of human survivors whose outposts were on an upper level. These two groups made up two Team Fortress 2 teams, the one I was with had a yellow outpost (and appeared on the minimap in the lower right corner of my vision as yellow), which was just kind of a crowded camp with people wearing mostly yellow clothes, and must have been the blue team since my opponents on the lower level were mostly wearing red. Everything on the minimap was represented by small, colored triangles, yellow and green for the outpost bases and control points, and gray for uncaptured control points. The other team had a green outpost (and was correspondingly green on the minimap) and was apparently the red team. On the lower level was kind of a Doom-style research outpost where most of the action took place. There was three objective locations arranged in kind of a triangle formation on the map that we were fighting over. In place of the usual TF2 characters, it was real-looking people just pretending to be the classes. I was a spy, and playing decent, but being constantly frustrated that my backstab was rarely working. I didn't have an actual spy's knife in my hands but I did the backstab animation with my fist and it would only work occasionally. There were a handful of players, both men and women. I remember there was a spy-girl with the spy's mask and blonde pigtails who would spawn and I'd keep following her and killing her because she wasn't very good. There was a larger guy with a red shirt on who was apparently a heavy. He was running around doing stuff and ignoring me as I tried to kill him. I backstabbed him and he said, "Okay, that's one." and I apparently understood I needed to do it twice to kill him but the second stab refused to work. Towards the end I somehow got to see the green outpost and I remember thinking it looked way cooler than the yellow one; for one it was green, there were light green lights everywhere and the people there looked like a cult, in green robes worshiping a triangle or pyramid thingy that was hovering a little ways up made out of the light green light. I remember a little ways before it ended it transitioned into what seemed like some kind of preview trailer for this little dream game where two people were discussing features; the one that one of them highlighted was how sometimes a third team would enter the game, something that was represented by another team (though I seem to remember it was the same color of green) popped up on the minimap and a line moved from their base to the outposts.

A lot of triangle imagery in the second segment.

Edit: This is a partial entry with one dream sequence omitted. See file 0813-0814; recall note: fast food restaurant, black coat.

Just laid down to get a little more sleep when I remembered some more details of what was either a separate dream or a long segment before the previous one (if so, I was myself at this point and not Bruce Willis).

-

And even just now I recall another separate sequence. At this point I'm not sure where in tonight's overall sequence it belongs.

I was riding a bike (with a helmet even, I remember checking--successfully within the dream--a few times to be sure I was wearing one) up 10th street, I think I was on my way to work (noting of course I don't work anywhere going that direction). I turned left onto 19th avenue and decided I move to the sidewalk and stop taking up space on the street, only before I was able to do so I fell into a small crowd (maybe 6-7) of people walking (apparently I was biking really slow?) west down 19th avenue. They were talking to each other about something I wasn't paying attention to. I decided to go along with them as they moved onto the sidewalk and started moving behind some beige-colored buildings where the strip mall would be on the 10th street/19th avenue corner. We kept going and the crowd sorta slowly grew larger; I was still on my bike (I checked for a helmet here for sure at one point). As we reached the end of the buildings heading west still, someone pointed out that there was a large wooden fence blocking further passage west as well as one to our left blocking passage south. The north-south fence was slanted slightly diagonally southwest to northeast, so we turned the corner of the building to the north and kept going. The fence and the building reached a point where the formed a small passage at the building's northwest corner.

I volunteered to go in first and check it out (at some point after turning the corner I'd gotten off my bike). Inside the passage it was very narrow, made out of wood planks like the fence outside, and the passage was uneven (ie not straight, the walls zig-zagged slightly at random intervals, mostly small but with interesting patterns, for instance there were small alcoves where people would be sitting). It seemed like it was not longer outdoors somehow, but there was a really high ceiling. It sounded crowded, like there were a lot of people outside the wooden-fence-passage area that I couldn't see, and even the passage was fairly crowded with random people just loitering of passing through in the opposite direction. It was slanted slightly downhill, so I remember thinking it felt like I was moving out of a mountain passage amusement-park-log-chute-style. My memory of this sequence ended at some point as I was navigating this passage.

I managed to hold onto a fragment of a dream last night (night of 8/10-8/11) that I want to write down before I blow it off for too long; it involved playing around with what felt like a hole in the back of my left lower incisor with my tongue.

It wasn't as memorable as the myriad of past dreams I can remember where I've had teeth falling out, but it was similar in overall theme.

Note for thought: do the permanent retainers I have installed after I had braces still remain in dreams?

Edit: Quick error fixing and addendum, this occurred night of 8/10-8/11, not 8/11-8/12 (which would be tonight).
Also, addendum to the final note, it occurred to me as I went to lay down again that if the retainers do indeed seem to be absent I may be able to use them for reality checking?
Final note, I also seem to recall that when I have teeth-related dreams, the oral tactile sensations seem to be the only sensory information I retain upon awakening.