One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I'm in a room full of my coworkers. Everyone is in formal business dress. It seems we are on retreat. I wander in and around this building. There are tourists. This part of the dream is hazy. I think I walked back and forth through a hallways looking for a particular room.

I walk up a staircase and rejoin my coworkers. Everyone sits. The boss stands at front and begins to give us an inspirational talk. But it quickly turns to frustration and desperation. He says he's tired of hearing criticism from the board about all of us. He distributes a handout of several pages stapled. The top page is a deep red. The rest are white. The pages have emails from the board about us. The very first one is about me. It says I'm unproductive and waste time and cost too much to pay.

I am annoyed but I realize that the emails are just personal attacks and not really constructive. I think this is the point the boss was trying to make. That the board don't know what they are talking about, just trying to cover their own by attacking us personally. He says we're going to have a fresh start tomorrow. He dismisses everyone. Everyone else heads to the door, making conversation. Instead, I reach for my laptop out of my bag. I find a quiet room and plug it in. I want to start working right away.

Boat
I'm in a boat with my father. We are going up a narrow, rocky river to Seattle. We get nervous as the reckless captain barely steers around obstacles. Then a killer whale is following us. It's hard to tell if it's stalking us or just wants to play because it looks like it's smiling. The killer whale says something ominous. I forget exactly but it was something like "I wonder what they taste like?" I say, "I hope that's just something the trainer taught him to say." As if a killer whale could be taught to speak like a parrot without understanding the words it says.

Hotel Shower
I'm in a hotel room with my mother and sister. I'm examining the shower head. I want to replace it with a larger one that also has a flexible hose that can be detached. The shower is just a tub though and the faucet isn't high enough. I think I could install some pipe to extend it higher.
I leave the shower. My mother is ready to leave. Her hotel is 6 blocks away. I suppose we are in San Francisco. I ask her to wait 5 minutes so I can walk with her. My sister judges my clothes.

Falling, Jen, Mirrors
Method WILD
Lucidity B
Vividness B
Control C
I was in bed, trying to fall asleep, not really trying to WILD. I start to have hallucinations and I just enjoy them for a while. Then I have that "wait, am I dreaming or awake" feeling. So I imagine myself falling through the bed. I have found this to be the most reliable method of transitioning into WILD.

So, sure enough, after a few seconds, I fall through the bed. I'm falling through darkness with a few flashes of white light surrounding me. I think Hmm, what should I do? The last time I was falling in a WILD I just kept falling for like 10 minutes. I recall a recent goal: summon Jen and tell her I'm over her. Jen is my ex-girlfriend. But I'm thinking too much and not paying attention to the dream. I snap back into my bed and become conscious of my body. Time to fall again.

I re-enter the dream, again falling through the bed. This time I imagine landing somewhere. After a few moments, I land inside a building. It seems like a hotel. I'm in a hallway dimly lit by lamps. An old woman is leading me through the hallway toward a room. We enter a room with impressive double doors. The room is mostly dark, lit only from the lamps in the hallway through the door. I notice a bed and an set of drawers with a modern look and bright orange paint. Strange.

I turn and say goodbye as the women walks out the door. I remember I was going to summon someone. I step out into the hallway and shout to the woman: "I'm expecting a guest. Could you show her in when she arrives?" Confident that will work, I step back into the room. I try the light switch, but it doesn't work. Oh, right. Of course. I think I should just leave the doors open to let the light in. I turn to and see that the double doors are now made of glass. I catch my reflection in the glass. I try to look at it more closely, but then I see a girl walking down the hallway toward me.

The girl walks in. It's not Jen. She has long black hair and is wearing black jeans and a black coat. She has an obnoxiously large purse on her arm. She is short and a bit frumpy. Her face is definitely not Jen. I smile politely and she smiles at me. Maybe I said something but I don't remember. I turn her around and gesture toward the door for her to leave. I turn away, looking around the room, as if to give the dream a chance to try again. I notice a mirror in the room and walk towards it to see my reflection. I catch a glimpse but again become aware of a girl walking into the room.

The next girl is also not Jen. She is very tall with dark hair. She is wearing a dark top but only a tiny black thong for bottoms. And she has knee-high black boots. I admire her long legs for a moment, mesmerized. I snap out of it as she walks up to me and puts her arms around me. It's still not Jen. I am a bit annoyed. Then it occurs to me that this very tall woman might actually be a transvestite. Not a pleasant thought. I'm knocked out of the dream and back in my bed. I'm still in sleep paralysis so I try once more to fall through the bed.

And once again I am falling. All black with flashes of white light. I think to re-enter the hotel scene. But I land in a room that's quite different. It's dark and still. Some light comes through a large window on the wall. Outside, it is raining with flashes of lightning. The room is ornately decorated. It's hard to describe. Imagine a study or library in an old castle but slightly more modern. I walk across the room and catch my reflection in the window glass from a distance. I look older. I'm dressed in a nice gray suit and I have a neatly trimmed beard. I look pretty sharp actually. Is this me in ten years? The reflection in the window flickers with the light outside so I turn to the wall where I see a mirror. I look closely but don't see much because it's dark. I look more like my usual self, with no beard. It looks like I'm wearing something over my head covering my ears like headphones.

I lean in until my face is right up to the mirror. I still struggle to make out some detail. I'm not sure what I'm looking for. Then I feel that I'm being pulling to the mirror. This could be interesting, let's see where this goes. I'm pulled into a dark tunnel and seem to fly for a bit into the void. Then the dream fades and I wake up.

Hotel Rooms
I am staying in a hotel with my girlfriend and a few other friends. We are in a large suite, but I want to have a room for just me and my girlfriend. I talk to the other friends about changing or rooming arrangement. Something about the bathroom.

Games in Mall
I'm in the video game store of a mall. I see two guys watching StarCraft on a TV screen. I talk to one them and learn he is a pro gamer. He is very friendly and encourages me to join his clan. Then he leave but has forgotten his copy of the game in the store. Then out in the mall hallways, a group of people are playing laser tag or something. It's disruptive to the other shoppers as these players run amok in the mall.

Angry
I'm in a hotel room with a bunch of familiar people. My sister, mother, roommate, friend, friend's fiance, and another friend. I seem to be the day before the friend's wedding and it's my job to organize things. I've arranged for the groom and guys to stay the night at my apartment and the bride and girls will stay someone else. Also, there are a bunch of cats in the room. I start to become really frustrated and upset about the situation. The cats shouldn't be here. Some of them seem to be stray cats off the street. My friends aren't cooperating. I am actually enraged and walk out because I don't want to be in the same room with these people anymore.

T-Shirt Store
I am in a clothing store in a mall. Two friends are with me. The store just has a few racks of men's t-shirts with a random variety of prints and text. A salesperson is showing me the t-shirts, but I'm not interested. My friends and I leave and back into the indoor mall. Suddenly, I feel lost. I look around and finally see my friends way ahead of me down the hallway.

P vs D
I'm in a video game. It's a futuristic shooter. I'm just wandering through a spaceship when I come upon two teams fighting a match. One team has the clan tag P, the other D. P makes me think of Protoss, and for some reason I think D means Terran. The players where space suits like the marines in Starcraft. D's suits are blue, P is red. They aren't shooting each other though. They are playing a sport where you throw a ball, a bit like basketball but more like water polo without water (which, interestingly, is nothing like the game we call polo, but I digress). The glowing blue ball is in the hands of a player from the D team. The game is stopped and the two sides are arguing about something. Something about one team being rude. Then something about old forums posts for a clan called 3DM which later turned into D.

The Girl in the Window
Method DILD (false awakening), DEILD
Lucidity C
Vividness C
Control C
Short lucid here. Still got sex on the brain lately. Don't recall before, but start with a false awakening. I quickly realize I am not in my own room so I become lucid. I seem to be in a hotel room. The bed is near the window which is unshaded. It's sunny and bright outside. I look out the window. I figure I am on about the third or fourth floor. The window overlooks a swimming pool area which is surrounded by more hotel rooms on all sides. Down one floor and to the right, I see in through the window of another guest's room. It's an attractive young woman wearing just a towel. She sees me, we make eye contact. She smiles.

I step out through my window and directly to her balcony, all the way across the pool courtyard. It's as if the scene through my window is just a flat painting and I violate the fake 3D perspective and just step the short distance in 2D space. Does that make sense? Anyway, I somehow unrealistically get to the girl's room. Once I am in, things return to be more realistic. She is laying on a bed, still wearing just a white towel. She is brunette and nicely tanned. She smiles at me seductively. There's another bed in the room and another girl who I don't really pay attention to. I flirt with the girl in the towel:

Me: I'm the guy from the window.
Her: (laugh) I'm the girl from the window.
Me: Did you just get out of the shower?
Her: (nods, she stands up, walks behind me, takes my hand and starts to lead me away)
Me: (now aware of the other girl) Your roommate won't mind?

Then I wake. Damn it. I DEILD back. I'm in the same room, but the towel girl is gone. The other girl is still here. The towel girl had left my field of vision while I was looking at the other girl, so I guess this kinda makes sense. The second girl is blonde and pale, quite the opposite of the other girl. She walks to me and says nervously: "I'm not as good at this as she is", referring to the other girl who seems gone for good. We start to have sex but I'm still thinking what happened to the first girl. Dream fades. I try to DEILD again but no success.

I planned to not record my dreams this night. I just wanted to get a solid night's rest. So no recall in the first half (the usual reason). And for the first couple dreams I didn't write anything down. By the last two, I realized the dreams were worth writing down so I did so.

"Do Nothing"
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: C
~0800: No written notes, so this is spotty from memory. I don't recall how I became lucid. The first thing I recall is doing a nose plug RC. I'm sitting at a campfire circle. It's dusk. It seems like I'm in the giant doorway of an abandoned factory or airplane hanger. A few other DCs are around the fire. They look like migrant workers. The scene made me think of movies like The Motorcycle Diaries and Mi Mejor Enemigo. I remember my plan: "Do nothing", practice reality checks, focus on all 5 senses.. For taste, I lick a rock on the ground and it tastes like dirt! I vaguely recall that I did things for the other senses. I think I had double vision and that frustrated me. I try to talk to the DCs but I don't recall they said anything.

fragment
~0915: C. No written notes, so this is from memory. First thing I recall is a false awakening. I sense there was more before but no detail. I'm in my own room. I get out of bed and look at the time: 1:30pm. Crap, it is really that late? I get up, take off my Zeo headband and dock it in the bedside unit. It gives me a sleep score of 42. Really? I thought I slept better than that. Wake up for real. It's only about 9. My Zeo score for the night ended up at a more respectable 83.

Unfocused Lucid
Lucidity: C
Vividness: C
Control: D
1100: Just a few notes so this is mostly from memory. I'm in a classroom. It's a art or shop class so all the students are standing at work tables. In the dream, I seem to be distracted or sleepy. The teacher is a woman and there are one or two girls sharing my table. The first thing I recall is the teacher scolding me for not paying attention. So I become aware of what we are supposed to be doing. We have a piece of paper with a drawing on it. On top, we have a piece of tracing paper and we are supposed to trace the drawing under it. The drawing is an architectural sketch of a colonial era boat, I think. So I start tracing but there is a time limit. The teacher is nearby, watching me. She thinks I won't finish in time. The other girl at my table is done and she is also watching me. I feel nervous but I act confident. I think we do two tracings like this. The next task is to trim a large piece of meat. It's really thin, more like a the hide than the flesh. The tracing paper has become butcher paper. I move to a larger table and spread this gross sheet of meat over the paper.

Skip. Now I'm outside in what seems to be a school campus but it's unfamiliar. I'm walking up a grassy hill. There are many other students around. It's bright daylight. I see a girl who I recognize as a high school classmate, Beth. I'm not sure but I think this must be what made me lucid. Her hair is weird, kinda like dreadlocks but also kinda like bananas. Anyway, her face is recognizable. Lucidity and control are low at this point. I don't RC or stabilize. I just march up to her, say hello, and demand a blow job. She starts doing it but soon turns into a weird creature and I stop.

I walk away and I'm starting to get my wits about me. But lucidity, vividness, and control are still pretty low. I try to think of my tasks. The only one I can remember is flying barrel roll. I hesitate because my recent flying has not been good. But I can't think of anything else to do so I jump and spin. It works! I'm able to hover horizontally a few feet off the ground and a spin multiple times. (Wikipedia tells me that this is actually an aileron roll, not a barrel roll) I fly around spinning for about 30 seconds. Maybe I popped out to third-person a bit. My lucidity was fading away.

Skip. Now I'm in a building. The school gym or theater maybe? Maybe I lost lucidity for a while and then regained it here. A troupe of clowns is performing a circus-style act. I am in a corner back stage, near the exit. I see a door but I want to try walking through the wall. I try a few times but fail. I try to convince myself that I can do it. I know this is a dream and that I can walk through the wall. But no luck. Dream ends. In retrospect, this attempt at control was too forced.

Dream Within Dream
1130 C. This was a combination of false awakening and false memory that made it feel like a dream within a dream. I sense that I am out of town for work (this is the false memory). I'm staying in a hotel and I'm sleeping and dreaming. In the dream, I am in a WWII-esque battle among the ruins of a bombed city. I'm with my childhood friend Collin. I only have a tiny pistol in this big fight. I see an enemy across the way and fire a few careful shots. The gun is very inaccurate but I manage to hit him in the head. Everyone is happy and celebrates me as the hero.

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. In the dream, I think that the war scene was a lucid dream and I remember the two real previous lucids. So I congratulate myself for 3 lucids in the night.

Skip. Now I'm back in my apartment. Combining the war dream, the false awakening in the hotel, and the false memory of traveling for work, this all creates the dream within the dream phenomenon. So anyway, I'm home in my apartment but it looks totally different. I sense that, as I returned from traveling, my roommate has just left. I see that he has left a bunch of books and devices about lucid dreaming. He is just starting to pratice having lucid dreams. I go in the bathroom and see that the faucet has been left on just a drip. But over several days, the drip has flooded the room with an inch of water.

Like yesterday, several short dreams mostly late in the morning. I woke up more times and recalls some other tiny dreams and hallucinations but didn't write them down.

Fire Breath
0328: D. In a movie/video game. Stars David Duchovny and Jennifer Aniston. Though sometimes I sense the female character is my mother. Fighting hordes of evil demons. I choose one weapon and it's fire breath. It's super effective. Something about smelling like Patchouli oli.

Frisky Girl
0449: C. I'm in a hotel room but it's really big. There are four queen-sized beds lined up. It's dark. I'm on one of the center beds with a laptop, playing some classic game. A couple stumbles in and gets on the other middle bed next to me. The girl is Asian, the guy is middle-eastern or Indian. They start having sex. I feel a bit awkward. I watch for a bit, then turn away. I turn off the screen of the laptop and try to sleep. They finish and then the girl jumps on my bed. She's really friendly and frisky. She straddles me. Again, I feel weird but start to go along with it. The other guy doesn't seem upset. The girl and guy push our two beds together. But the guy lays in his bed while the girl lays with me in my bed. I'm showing her something on the laptop. Then I want to turn it off but I have trouble pressing the right button.

WBTB 60 minutes, B-Complex vitamin

Chasing Game
0753: D. Watching Ben play a game. He runs around a sports track chasing a monster. He is a deer. It's overcast and the ground is covered with snow. He quickly taps one button to speed up but he keeps accidentally pressing the Start button which pauses the game and breaks his rhythm.

Stationary Tactics
0835: D. I'm in the game Counter-Strike. The old one. The map is Office. I'm CT. I think I'm just playing with bots. I don't move. I just stand in the spawn and wait for the bots to find me. When they do, I headshot them with my pistol.

fragment
1102: F. Some cultural debate about Europeans?