One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I'm having some marathon REM cycles lately. Today, no supplements or unusual food but I drank some caffeine late in the day that kept me up late.

Ectoplasm Game
1038: D. I have the vague sense that this was really long, but my recall isn't great. I'm in a house with my mother and sister. But the house is unfamiliar. We are talking in the kitchen. The sink is full of dirty dishes. My sister is leaving tomorrow? Water is important for some reason.

Then I sit in the living room and play a video game. It's like Prince of Persia where I'm running and jumping along walls. The character looks more like Aladdin though. Sometimes it seems I am playing the game, other times I am in the game. I am leading around a princess, trying to escape a castle. All around, there is bluish gooey substances called ectoplasm. If you touch the ectoplasm, you'll become a ghost. I think it's blue because it's absorbed all the water. So as we are escaping, we also have to reverse the magic and save all the water.

But it's an inevitable part of the game that the main character will become a ghost. So there's one scene where I jump and can't avoid the ectoplasm. When I do, a retail box of the video game opens and there are souvenir water jugs inside.

fragment
I no longer have my Civic and instead drive a pickup truck.

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.