The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of December 24-27, 2011. Adult content warning for the one from December 25-26.]

Night of December 24-25

I'm at church, with my choir, accompanying our performance of “What Child is This?” on my clarinet. My clarinet keeps misfiring; some of the notes here and there refuse to play. I'm embarrassed. [This was definitely an anxiety dream. Exactly that actually happened during our choir rehearsal on Thursday, December 22, and I was afraid it was going to happen during the performance, which was the morning after I had this dream, on Christmas Day. Thankfully, it didn't happen; my clarinet worked fine.]

Night of December 25-26

I'm at this place that's kind of like a spa. It's a place for people to rest, relax, and renew. I'm in an outdoor area of this place, and it's a beautiful, warm, sunny day. I'm lying around on the ground, wearing only panties, along with several other women who are doing exactly the same. Other people are walking around the grounds, and the thought crosses my mind: Maybe I should go and put on some slightly more modest panties.

All of a sudden, I'm being molested by a group of two or three men. I manage to fight them off and struggle out of their grasp. All the while, I'm shouting at them, forcefully telling them to stop, and that I don't like or appreciate what they're doing. I end my tirade by telling another man, who's just sitting on the ground watching the proceedings, that he's a despicable jerk, too [or something to that effect; I don't remember my exact words here]. I tell him this because I know that he's being paid to be there as a witness to the scene that just unfolded. I also know that the molesters were also hired to do what they did. The men who hired them are also in the scene, standing around, watching it all happen. I know exactly what they're doing: They're lawyers, and they have a racket going on where they hire people to rape beautiful girls in establishments like the one I'm at, and then get the girls to sue those establishments for a lot of money, of which they get a percentage because they act as the girls' representation.

Night of December 26-27

I'm at work, but I'm participating in a dramatization of the work we do at my workplace for TV. The part of my boss [who I've mentioned in this DJ before] is being played by Tim Allen. I reflect that this was a strange casting choice, since he doesn't look at all like my boss, nor does he act much like him.

I'm watching a movie about a big, tall castle, a white one that looks like it came straight out of a fairy tale. I'm immersed in the movie, and I'm flying in circles around the top of the castle's high, central tower. There is a song playing on the movie soundtrack that I find kind of annoying, so I want to change the channel on the movie. Awww, man, the remote's all the way down there, I think to myself when I look down at the ground and see the TV remote control lying there. Then I think, Maybe I can get it by telekinesis. Wait a second. If I'm thinking about getting the remote by telekinesis, and flying around, I must be dreaming.

I stretch out my hand toward the remote control and concentrate on it, trying to use the force of my will to pull it into my hand. It doesn't work. Then, my mind calls up the primary example in my schema for what pulling an object into your hand with your mind looks like: the wampa cave scene from The Empire Strikes Back [starting at 2:20]. I think, It's kind of like the object is attached to a bungee cord that snaps it back into your hand. I try again, keeping that analogy in mind and focusing on it. This time, it works. The remote control flies up into my hand, just as if it were attached to a bungee cord.

At this point, I abruptly realize that during the time I've been concentrating on drawing the remote control into my hand, I haven't been concentrating on flying, so I've been gradually descending without noticing it. I'm now only a yard or two above the ground. I quickly correct for this and start climbing again. As I do so, I think, “And hurry! We're losing altitude fast!” And yes, “altitude” is the correct term in this instance, because this is a planet I'm flying over, not a moon. Even if it is just a dream planet. [This is a reference to the original version of the “Star Tours” ride from the Disney theme parks.] The remote control has transformed into a deodorant stick, which I use on myself. [? I don't even know.]

I woke up very pleased with myself, knowing that I could finally cross “Move an object with my mind” off my master list of lucid goals!

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in a big, fancy hotel. Some guy starts chasing me through the hotel. I try to get away from him by running up the stairs, further into the hotel. I discover that each floor of the hotel is really split into two sub-levels, with two short, parallel sets of stairs connecting the two sub-levels. There are completely separate, longer sets of stairs connecting the different levels. I realize that one can run all the way around each sub-level in a loop by going up and down the stairs. [ ] At some point while I'm running away, some other guy diverts me into an area off to the side from where I'm running, behind a door, and closes the door. This other guy is helping me hide from/escape from the first guy.

[I know exactly what this was all about. I'm pretty sure this dream was an expression of my anxiety over the fact that I haven't gotten my NaNoWriMo novel anywhere near finished.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 23-24, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in [what I believe to be] the real-life hotel lobby where the hotel scenes from Inception were filmed. I'm appreciating how special it is to be here, in one of the filming locations for my favorite movie. [But totally failing to make the associative leap to the fact that I'm actually in a dream, myself. ] I even see Leonardo DiCaprio walk past. [*LOL* I fail at recognizing dreams...] I know that this building is located on the campus of a local private university. I look through a window and see a sign above the entrance to another building. The sign reads “(Some last name) Library.”

I proceed through the interior of the building I'm in to the entrance of somebody’s dorm. The dorm is themed to resemble ancient Barcelona, Spain. In the dining area, I meet up with a group of my friends from real life, including SS and SH [who I know from completely different social groups and who don't even know each other in real life, by the way]. They're all sitting at a table, eating, and I sit down and join them. It's a Mimi's Cafe table. Several of my friends order my favorite chicken and pasta dish, the one I always order when I'm at Mimi's. Sean has to leave the meal early because he has other plans, so I get to eat his chicken. (I've just sat down, so I haven't had a chance to order my own meal.) Our conversation over dinner is being filmed for TV, and we all know it. We all get separate checks at the end of the meal.

I wake up in my current room to light coming from under my sleep mask. I'm still sleepy, and I don't want to get up, but I get up in order to check the time. I check my watch, my cell phone, and my desk phone [from work], which is on my dresser. They all show the same time: it's 10:39 AM, which means I'm late for my pre-church-service choir practice. I think, It can't be that late already!, but I reason that if all three timepieces agree, then it must actually be that late. When I checked my cell phone, I saw the numbers in the hour field counting up from 2 to 10 at a rate of about 1 number per half-second, but now I rationalize this observation: It must only update the display to the current time when you pick it up and look at it.

I go out of my house, still wearing the clothes I was wearing on Friday. [I had this dream on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and I was wearing the outfit I actually had been wearing on the Friday immediately before in real life.] I'm going outside to take out the trash. “Outside” turns out to be a narrow parking lot that surrounds a shopping center. A mother calls to her daughter, Johana. I think, That's a pretty name.

I find a trash can at the outer edge , and empty my trash can into it. I catch a cold container of french fries as they fall from my trash can, and eat them, because I'm still running late for choir practice and don't have time for breakfast. I walk back home through one of the stores in the shopping center, past racks of CD and DVD cases.

...And then I woke up for real, and was pretty embarrassed. I realized that, indeed, it couldn't be that late in the morning already. If it had actually been time to get up, I would have heard the alarm on my cell phone go off, and I hadn't heard it yet.

--------------------------------------------------
Side notes:

This was my first false awakening in my new room, at my new house. It was totally convincing, especially given the fact that I really am usually a few minutes late for a lot of things. The way I totally failed to catch it, even though my phone from my desk at work was in my room at home and the numbers on my cell phone were changing, just goes to show how strong our tendency to rationalize things is. However, on a more positive note, I had this highly convincing false awakening in my new room only two weeks after I had moved into it. I think this bodes well for my mental and emotional state. It may well mean that my unconscious mind has accepted the new room as the place where I'm supposed to be when I wake up, which is great.

I'm in House #1. [So much for recognizing dream signs... :/] I look through a window that looks out onto the patio from the side opposite the dining room [um... in real life, that would be the bathroom window, from which such a view would be impossible...] and see that there's a wasps' nest hanging from the eaves outside the dining-room window.

I'm in the garage, and I say goodbye to P. There are two cool, old, red, elongated, flat-topped cars there (one might have been a convertible). My parents are taking me out somewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything I want to wear, so I'm only wearing my royal blue bathrobe. [I used to have this robe in real life, but I don't anymore.]

[Dreamskip.] I'm driving the brown car into the parking lot where our hair salon and the OSH hardware store are [back in our old town]. I'm naked, so I try to crouch down so that the other drivers around don't see me. When I try to park, the driver of the car that's parked crookedly in the space next to mine decides to back out and straighten his parking job, coming close to hitting my car, but narrowly missing it. I cower in my seat, frightened. When the driver gets out of his car and comes over to talk to me, I look down to check the arrangement of my blue bathrobe, which I'm suddenly wearing again, and make sure it's covering me decently. The other driver tells me that he didn't hit me.

Then, four young boys (10 or so) come to my car and start pestering me relentlessly, climbing in it and all over it and talking to me loudly and annoyingly. I yell as loudly as I can at them to GO AWAY. I'm surprised that I'm capable of yelling with that volume. After I yell at them like that about three times, they finally go away. I'm trying to keep my blue robe on and maintain my modesty, with only partial success. I continue to do so once I've moved from my car to a patio table on the sidewalk outside the hardware store. [I don't recall getting from one location to the other.] People pass me by on the sidewalk as I try to keep the robe up. Next to me on the sidewalk, B.W. and his chorale friends are getting dressed for a performance.

-----------------------------
Side notes:

This was an interesting twist on a classic anxiety dream. It featured the common dream scenario of being naked in a public place and ashamed of it, but it combined that scenario with two stressful occurrences from my waking life: a minor car accident in a parking lot, and the very spirited all-boys class I've been teaching once a week. In the dream, I yelled more loudly than I ever have in real life. Do I unconsciously wish I could yell that loud in reality? It's a plausible hypothesis.

I'm at work, viewing the contents of my work e-mail account. I discover, to my surprise and dismay, that earlier, when I logged in to Petpet Park from work using my existing password and my new work e-mail address, the site created a whole new account for me and began sending e-mail alerts related to that account to my work e-mail address. Each of these e-mail alerts is marked with one of Petpet Park's pawprint icons. I'm very worried that my boss will see these e-mails and find out that I've been goofing off and playing games at work.

[Different dream.] I'm having a somewhat heated discussion with my parents about my living arrangements.

---------------------------
Side notes:

I was already consciously aware that I was anxious about the topic of the second dream, but not the first one. That first dream brought my guilt and fear that my less-than-stellar work habits will be discovered to my conscious attention for the first time. I love it when dreams give me useful insights like that.

I'm going to work at an elementary school [neither of the ones I work at in reality]. I have to go back out to my car to get something. There are other people out in the large, flat parking lot. When I finally head into the building, it's already 3:00, a full hour later than I was supposed to start working. I'm mad at myself because the fact that I got started late means that I can't count that first hour (2:00 – 3:00) toward my total number of AmeriCorps service hours. [LOL! No, no, brain, that was my last teaching job.]

I can hear the faint, muffled sound of repetitious, vaguely pop-sounding music playing from somewhere nearby. I realize that I've woken up in my bed. [Not really.] I'm still tired and decide to stay in bed.

I wake up again in a slightly different room. [Again, not really.] This time, I take my throw pillow and pull it over my head. [Yeah. I fail at catching false awakenings. :/]

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of April 22-23

I have returned to Japan to live there again. I live in an apartment that is in the same city and the same neighborhood as the one I lived in the first time, but it's several times as big, and has a separate kitchen as well as a larger bathroom.

I'm outside of the building, on the north side of it, standing on a large, open, elevated concrete plaza. [It kind of resembled the one that's part of the queue for Space Mountain at Disneyland, now that I think of it, only bigger. It definitely doesn't exist in real life, at least, not there.] I admire the view of the nearby hills and the old houses that are on top of them. [Um, what?] There is a tourist there with me, pointing a camera to the south at the big apartment building behind me. I tell him that he's at one of the three or four most popular places in the city to take pictures. [What. There are an awful lot more than three or four such places in my city, and that certainly isn't one of them.]

I have a conversation with someone in Japanese, and I seem to handle it fairly well. The words come quite easily. [And I don't remember any of them being off or weird, as they sometimes have been in previous dreams.] Nevertheless, I feel concerned about my Japanese language abilities no longer being adequate to deal with the day-to-day tasks of living here, especially not now that I'm fully responsible for dealing with all the transaction details for things like bills and rent. [This is currently of my ongoing background thoughts in real life, too, but one I haven't been able to give much conscious thought to. Obviously.] I take out my foreign resident registration card, look at it, and think, This is the one from last time, so it's expired now, but it'll be good until I can get an updated one. [Um, no. It doesn't work that way. I don't have the one from last time anymore in real life; I handed it in upon leaving Japan to return to the U.S., which is required.]

Night of April 23-24

My mom and I are driving through a wild area in the brown car. We're looking for an outdoor wedding ceremony that someone told us we should attend. We drive along, and I spot the ceremony: it's taking place on the opposite side of the river from where our car is. We drive along the river for a ways, looking for a place where we can cross it and turn around.

[Different scene.] My mom and I are shopping in the shopping center nearest our house [the one we often walk through in reality]. We're in a smallish, narrowish store that sells beauty products. We leave it and walk along the walkway that passes in front of all the shops, heading back home on foot. There is a man there who only has the upper half of one leg left, and who gets around on crutches. There is also a woman in an electric mobility vehicle there. She's wearing a T-shirt [I think; or it might have been a sign] with text on it that says that she's from a very large family, and that her mother started having children when she was only 11 [!!]. I get into a very long, involved conversation with this woman. [I don't remember most of it now, but I do remember that] One of the topics of conversation is how different our points of view and perspectives are because of the different experiences we've had. At one point, I say, “And I don't care about kids, unless they're my students.” She replies, “You see? Different perspectives.” We walk all the way to the end of the shopping center and turn up the road that leads back to my house.