One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

These were long dreams, but don't really have time to go into great details.

Parking
I don't remember the sequence of events too well. Something about my apartment. Then parking my car in the parking lot. I'm in a hurry so I do a sloppy parking job, blocking the spot next to me. I imagine a pickup truck is there. Then I am back in the apartment. I hear a knock at my door. It's someone from the apartment office. They are yelling that my car is blocking another person and I need to move it.

Then I woke up and heard the banging sound of the construction site across the street. For a moment, it sounded like a knock at my door, just as in the dream. It took me a few moments to convince myself that the dream was just a dream and I didn't have to move my car for real.

Paycheck
I'm at work. I walk past Rachel in the hall. I sense she's trying to make eye contact, but I avoid her. She's wearing a pink t-shirt. I enter my office and sit down. I notice that my desk is facing the wrong way, toward the wall instead of toward the door. A man walks in and hand me my paycheck. I don't recognize him. I assume he must be new in the HR department. The paycheck looks weird. It looks like a Scantron test form like in high school. The amount is wrong too. It's about $450 dollars, I don't recall the exact number. That's way too low. I think for a moment that it's because it is February and that's a short month. So I walk to Rachel's office ask her about it.

fragment
I'm driving my car, with H in the passenger seat. We are at a fast food drive-thru. H hands me a card to pay with. When I hand it to the cashier, she gives it back saying it's rejected. I look at it and see it's just a grocery club discount card, not a credit card.

Switching Places
0649: D. Gotta work on my handwriting. I had half a page of notes but all I can gather is: Dreamed of switching places with a bum who looks like Cheech Marin. We're on some kind of country club? Somehow we have people fooled. I also remember having a strong deja vu during this dream. Like I knew it was a dream and I had dreamed this scenario before. When I woke up, I almost didn't write it down because I felt like I already knew it.

Jumbled Mess
0805: D. Dreamed of talking to Rachel about missing work. Something to do with taking Grandma to get her hair done. Then I'm eating cereal out of the bags at the grocery store?

Then I'm in the desert and I see Rachel walking along a path towards a baseball stadium. It's the Angels. I follow her. There are two friends with me but I can't recall who. As we get close, I see Joe Pesci. I say "Hi Joe!" as if I knew him. He replies "That's Mr. Pesci to you," but in a joking way like he knows me too.

Had to drive a friend to the airport. I was up for about 2 hours and returned to bed.

fragment
1211: Arguing about dream?

fragment
1239: Looking up "butterfly" in the index of a book. The book is about dreams. This leads me to that quotation in the book about dreaming of a butterfly or the butterfly dreaming of you.

Experimenting with some dream titles to break up the wall of text a bit.

0230: F. Two sentences of illegible notes.

Birthday Girl, Bro Code
0337: C. Even in a dream, I obey the bro code. I'm at a girl's birthday party. I came with Lance. It's indoors at a house. There are about a dozen people there. It's dark outside and mostly dark inside. Lance and I pull the birthday girl aside to give her the gifts, so the three of us are alone in a dark room. Lance forgot to bring a gift, but luckily I brought two. I say they are from both of us.

The birthday girl has short black hair. She's tall and pretty. She's wearing a dress. She opens the presents. One is wrapped in purple, the other in yellow. Yellow is her favorite color? I don't remember what the gifts are but she really likes them and is very happy. She starts making out with both of us. (Not the arrangement I had planned for my first threesome, but whatever) As things get heated, it's clear the girl is more interested in me. She pulls off my pants and ignores Lance. Lance gets up and paces around the room upset. He keeps saying "That's not cool." I stop her and get up. She wants me to come back. I leave with Lance.

Hell Is An Amusement Park Line
0510: C. I need to raise half a million dollars, fast. Maybe I'm in debt to a loan shark.

Scene change. I'm in purgatory. I guess I'm dead. I'm waiting in line to be judged to go to heaven or hell. The focus changes to someone else, like I'm watching the movie of some else's life. The main character is a man who died while trying to solve a crime. He's destined to go to heaven, but he chooses the go to hell instead. He hopes he can find more information in hell to solve the crime. I think that's heroic. His partner tries to stop him and says he's crazy. Our hero says he's from San Francisco. Somehow that makes sense to the partner and lets him go.

Scene change. Now it's hell. People come sliding down a big ramp into a large red cavern crowded with people. It's lit by flames and it's fairly bright. Our hero comes sliding down. The focus switches back to me in first-person. I'm already in hell when the hero arrives. In hell, everyone is standing in tight groups in little pens formed by metal railings. It's just like waiting in line for an amusement park ride. I'm standing near some elementary school classmates and they are talking on and on about boring stuff. I think, this IS torture. I think that's funny.

I yell to someone who just arrives down the slide. "Hey, I hope you can come up with the money, by the way. Just because I'm dead doesn't mean I don't have bills to pay. But it's not like I can do anything about it from down here."

Birthday Gifts, Annoying Ice Cream Girl
0716: C. I'm indoors in an unfamiliar place but I get the impression that it's my own bedroom in a house. Apparently, it's my birthday. I'm unwrapping presents. Most of the presents are children's toys like dolls and figurines. My sister gives me a new Blackberry. I walk across the room to plug it in to charge. Another gift is D&D-like role playing game. Hugh wants to play so I unfold the map across the floor. I remark how big the map is. It's about 6 feet by 3 feet.

Scene change. I'm in a outdoor mall in a food court. I'm wearing a blue shirt with faded white lettering that says "BIRTHDAY TODDLER." Everyone is gone except Hugh, but he starts walking away leaving me alone. There are other random people in the food court though. A girl from the crowd walks up to me. I'm not attracted to her. She says she want to satisfy some urges and then walks away somewhere, as if to go fetch something that she will bring back to me. I feel awkward. Another girl walks up to me. This one is attractive and I want to talk to her. She wishes me happy birthday. I ask how she knew it was my birthday. She says it's written on my shirt.

The first girl comes back and hijacks the conversation. The second girl walks away. I'm annoyed about that but I try to be polite. The girl has a variety of ice cream and she starts feeding it to me. She want me to guess the flavors and pick my favorite. I play along to be polite. The first one is dark cherry. The second is strawberry. There are two more that I haven't tasted yet. The next one is green so I'm thinking it will either be mint or pistachio. Dream fades.

0740: False awakening. I don't RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal about my last dream. I write something but I don't note the time. Then I wake up for real. I RC. I roll over to write in my dream journal. I think, wait! Didn't I just do this? Damn it! I write: "False awakening. I dream of writing in my journal."

Unstable DEILD
0811: D. Again, I'm in the food court of an indoor mall but this one is different. I'm with two friends but I don't recall who. We sit at a bench near the actor who played George's father in Seinfeld. But he doesn't say anything. A young blond girl walk up to us nervously. She says "Did you guys know there's a dance coming up?" We say nothing and she walks away.

Another group of girls comes and sits near us in the same set of benches. One attractive blond looks at me and says "Hi I don't know if you remember me." I don't but I guess just to keep the conversation going: "Did we meet last night?" She says no. "I'm on of the 'Real Players.'" I have no idea what that means. Then she starts talking about a family and farm animals. Scene fades.

I wake up and DEILD into a lucid. My view is totally distorted. It's like I'm looking at a blurry TV, off center and from an angle. On the TV it looks like Street Fighter and I struggle to recognize one of the characters is Guile. I turn my head to try to center the view. Instead, I enter a rocky tunnel. I'm floating through, like I'm being carried underwater. It's like in medical films when they stick a camera down a person's esophagus. I look at my hands and rub them. The view still sucks. Dream ends. I think, damn, another difficult scene. I guess I need to be more prepared to face anything that comes at me. Or maybe I just need to be patient and let the dream solidify before trying any control.

Good night but a strange night. My cycles were about 60 minutes instead of 90. And for a period before the lucid, I was drifting in and out of sleep for about 5 minutes at a time. That's how I managed to count 5 dreams in only about 6 hours of sleep. I probably had 3 or 4 more tiny dreams that I didn't record. I think I would become a bit lucid in them and I would instantly drift into wake. I'd do an RC but I'd be in my bed every time.

0400: Finally asleep. It took me almost 2 hours, during which time I got up for a while and read.

0459: D. First cycle! But might notes are illegible. Here's what I decipher: Seems like I was asleep for a long time. I dreamed about my billy. I wants see if my buys construed. This is mad with me bran verses. Like my dreams are changed on my waterbed? Um yeah. No idea.

0559: C. I'm at a beach house next to a rocky ocean coast. Oregon, maybe. I'm outside. It's bright but just a bit hazy. I'm alone but I feel my father is around and that the house belongs to a friend of his who were are visiting. I'm using a laptop, paying bills. I have a physical letter that is some kind of offer to bid on a house for $200,000. I fill out the form online but stop to think before submitting it. I decide not too. My father walks out and asks if I'm getting an error on my computer. Something about "Phone recognized". He says it happens when you close a window. I close the window and see several error popup windows cascade across the screen and then close one by one. The owner of the beach house also comes out and explains they probably need to restart the router. We try to determine when exactly the problem started. But I hadn't closed a window while I was working so I only saw it after my father asked me to try.

0648: D. This was one of the really short dreams while drifting in and out of sleep. I'm on a computer. I'm programming while Alt+Tabbing back and forth to a movie. My sister sees the movie and is upset. Then the cat jump on my lap.

0730: D. I'm in the Daisetta house watching a basketball game. It's night outside but the lights are on inside. Lance is in the room, working on a computer. Both basketball teams are wearing red and it's confusing. I find this strange. I try to talk to Lance but he's focused on his work and isn't interested in the game. The game is important, like a playoff game. Lance gets up and put on a coat to leave. He's dressed for rainy weather.

0821: B. I'm driving home at night. I pull into the parking lot and Hugh is waiting for me. We talk about the plan for me to pick him up from the airport. I think, wait, aren't you supposed to be out of town? I'm picking you up, not dropping you off. This is weird and I become semi-lucid. But the parking lot is familiar and nothing else strange is happening. So I lose it. I walk to the elevator. There are a few old Asian ladies. One tries to talk to me in sign language.

I get on the elevator alone and head up to my floor. As it stops, I hear a creaking noise. The elevator slowly starts to tip over to the right with me in it, like a sinking ship. Oh, I'm dreaming. God I hope I'm dreaming. I stay cool. "This is my world and I can do anything!" As the elevator turns horizontal, I jump out and hover in the elevator shaft. The car falls to the ground. I'm looking in to the building and it's looks dark and damaged, like on Star Trek when they take heavy damage with smoke and broken pipes in the corridors. Three superheroes fly out of the corridor and hit me while I'm still hovering in the elevator shaft. This knocks we out of the building and into the dark downtown Los Angeles skyline.

My stability and control aren't great. I look at my hands and that helps a lot. I'm still flying. I look around and see rooftops and buildings below. This is cool. Now the three superheroes are zooming around and attacking me with fireballs. They are dressed in brightly colored tights, but I don't recognized them specifically. I think, "Am I the good guy or the bad guy"? Oh well. I fight back with my fireballs (they are blue today) and fire breath.

I try the flying backward somersault with mixed success. As I'm upside-down, my vision goes black and disoriented. I recover. I keep defending myself with fireballs. At one point, 5 mirror images of Spider-Man jump out and attack me too. I throw a Street Fighter Guile Sonic Boom.

False awakening. I'm in my own bed. I know I'm dreaming but I feel like I'm in my physical body. I can feel the sleep paralysis of my physical body. I look down and see my foot with distorted toes wiggling. I try to move my dream arms. I try to focus. Dream fades and I end up moving my physical arms.

Yet another LD cut short by my self-doubt about stabilizing. I've rehearsed my stabilization routine so many times that I think I've developed a fear that it won't work. Next time, I think I need to shatter that doubt. I'll say "This is my world and I can do anything." I will be bold and confident.

0010: Sleep. I daydream of Never. I think maybe if I take a nap in Never then I might enter the dream world. Nothing happens but it's pleasant.

0256: C. I'm in the SAV house. Mother and sister are with me. We are talking and worried about money. I'm planning to start college. In fact, I've missed the first day. My classes are already scheduled. We decided that I should go. Then we are folding laundry, but they don't hang my pants the way I like. I say this, but quickly thank them for their help. Sister tells me something about "action opportunities". I ask if I should accept the offers on campus to join research experiments for free pizza or money.

Then suddenly there are a few unfamiliar men in the room talking. One is old and dressed like a cowboy with a cowboy hat and long white beard. He talks about how he's such a good salesman. I explains that power is more important than position. If all you have is position, you are vulnerable.

0436: B. I am on my old college campus. I get there really early for the first day, before anyone is awake. I'm not really dressed or prepared. I have on an undershirt like I wear to sleep. I sneak into a dormitory to lay down on a couch in a common room. A guy down the hall recognizes me but I don't recognize him. His hair is messy from sleeping and he has a scraggly beard. He looks for a video tape in a pile. He says I made it years ago and it will prove that I was here before. I don't believe any of this and leave.

I keep looking at my blackberry where I have the times and room numbers of my classes. My first class is in a building called "NAS-ISI" but I don't know where that is. I don't have a map. I wander to the center of campus where there is supposed to be a big map. It's a cloudy, foggy earlier morning and there are lots of DCs walking around campus. A pretty girl, maybe the student body president, is talking on a megaphone to welcome people. A lot of people are wearing the same plain off-white hooded sweatshirt. I think there's a street vendor selling this sweater because it's cold (like selling umbrella when it's raining).

I can't find the campus map and I have enough sense to think this is weird. But not enough sense to become lucid. Instead I start wandering through buildings hoping to find it. I know the general direction of the engineering area so I think I'll probably find it. The buildings don't have hallways, just rooms. So I'm walking through classrooms where classes are taking place. In one, I accidentally bump a guy in the back of the head. I say "oops, sorry, very sorry" and continue walking. I hear him mumble, "you're not really sorry". I walk through a few other rooms and reach a dead end so I turn around. I go back through the same room and the same guy says something sarcastic trying to be funny and calls me "Smith". I say sarcastically back "You're funny" and keep walking. Again, I here him mumble "you don't mean that either." I feel so clever.

In another building I pass a classroom and see an old high school friend Chris. He wants to talk but I don't want to stop. I tell him I promise we can catch up another time. He says "we have an understanding" which I recognize as an allusion to an email I had sent him. I feel bad for not being friendly, but I keep searching for my class.

Yet another building is labeled as a church. Inside, a bunch of DCs are dressed colorfully and holding musical instruments. Through that building I reach an outdoor area that I think is the engineering area. The fog has lifted. I look around for a campus map again with no luck. Again, I think this is strange. I just stand looking around as people walk by. I feel hopeless and embarrassed.

0630: C. This was after a WBTB of about 45 minutes. I ate some bread, drank some apple juice, read, and journaled. I'm driving with my father on 2-lane highway out in the middle of nowhere. We come upon two wrecked cars in the opposite lane and stop. Maybe we hit something too? Father is looking at our own car. I walk over to the other cars. One is a old beat-up muscle car and the other is a like bank security van or maybe a military APC. It was a head-to-head collision and both cars' front ends are wrecked. An oldish man who looks like a trucker has the hood up and he's replacing the spark plugs. I think that's strange because it's not really going to help the situation.

Three or four DCs come walking up to the scene along the side of the road from the far direction. I think they must be from one of the crashed cars and went looking for help. I ask "Are these your cars? Did you go for help?" They say no and keep walking by. Scene fades.

False awakening. I open my eyes and I'm in bed. The color of the sheets is the correct brown but the light is coming from the left when it should be behind me. Also I don't have my sleep mask. I'm pretty confident I'm dreaming and am about to RC but I hear a voice that startles me. I look around the room. It looks like a hotel room. It's mostly dark. It seems bright outside but only through a think crack in the heavy window drapes. There's a man in the room. He looks like he's in the mafia. He has greasy hair, a tight black shirt, slacks, and a gaudy gold necklace. Have I been kidnapped by these men? I try to refocus. I can't move my left arm. I don't panic. I look at the ceiling and notice the texture. I feel the bed below me. I sit up and nose-plug. Things feel a bit better.

The man sees me get up. He's to my left near the open door. He looks like he's about to leave. I think I see another man, similarly dressed, in the hallway outside the door. The first man warns me not to leave. I say I'm just going to use the bathroom. I get up and I'm only wearing underwear. I walk to the bathroom to my right while the man leaves and locks the door. I touch the walls. The dream is moderately stable but I'm worried I will lose it if I don't do more to stabilize it. In retrospect, it was probably the worrying that was causing the instability.

I'm in the bathroom and close the door. I say "stabilize, sharpen, clarity." It seems to be working. I think of what to do next when the shower catches my eye. I imagine warm water running over me. Would that help stability? Or would that make it worse? Maybe it would get foggy and blurry. (I wish I could go back into that dream just so I could slap myself in the face.) I decide not to shower. I start to walk out of the bathroom but I have no plan. I only feel the worry about stability. Dream fades. Tried to DEILD but no luck.

0945 C. I think this dream was longer but I don't recall the first part. This is obviously some residue from the day when I watched a Dane Cook comedy act where he did a bit about The Price Is Right. I'm in my own apartment in the middle of the day. I'm watching The Price Is Right but I notice the set looks wrong. The backgrounds are dark blue and The Big Wheel is smaller and also blue. It looks like it has glitter all over it. I remember thinking this was strange, but not enough to become lucid. A woman spins The Wheel and wins a bunch of money. She gets excited and jumps around. On the set near The Wheel are two soda vending machines, one Coke, the other Pepsi. The woman pushes a button on the Pepsi machine a few times but nothing happens. The show cuts to commercial.

The commercial shows a futuristic Pepsi machine. A hand gets a cup, fills it with soda, then holds it under a spout that shoots out cold bubbles. A male narrator is talking over the images. I don't remember everything he said but at the end, it's a Coors ad, not Pepsi.