The Lab Notebook

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Fragment:] I'm sorting through laundry, separating out the things that need to be washed. [Heh. Apparently, anything you've been avoiding dealing with in real life can show up in a dream, even if it's something completely mundane. ]

[The following is a different dream. I'm writing this at the end of the day after I woke up from it, rather than in the morning, right after waking up for it, so I've probably forgotten a lot by now. What I'm about to write here is all I remember now. Sorry.]

I'm a member of a group of Chosen Children [from the Digimon anime series; these people are otherwise known as Digidestined in the English dub]. Everyone in the group is around my own age. [Yes, I was the same age in my dream as I am in real life. Yes, I'm way too old to be a Chosen Child by the standards of any of the anime series. Evidently, my subconscious doesn't care about that.] There are at least 20 people in the group. We all go into a fairly small cabin, the kind that would be at a summer camp, in which we all have to find a space to lie down in, because we're all going to enter a dream together [Inception-style. No, I never once realized I was dreaming throughout this entire dream. Yes, I feel silly now.]. I climb into the upper bunk of one of the many bunk beds in the room. Addressing the group at large, I say something like, “Try to make space on the floor for everyone.”

With my right hand, I push up the left sleeve of my shirt to expose the inside of my left elbow. I wait for someone to come around with an IV needle for me. I'm not looking forward to having the needle put in, and want to just get it over with already. [Exactly how I feel about them in real life.]

I'm now in the first dream level, with the same group of people. Once again, we're all lying down, waiting to get IV needles put in. I think, We need to go into the deeper dream levels so that we can get into our stronger Digimon forms. I have the following knowledge about our current situation: We're in the midst of a mission to defeat some enemy, and in order to transform into the strongest Digimon forms we have available to us, we have to be several dream levels deep.

This time, I actually feel the needle being stuck in, but not into my elbow - it gets stuck into the tip of my left thumb. It's still not a pleasant experience, of course. I can feel it in there, and can feel my pulse throbbing in the tip of my thumb.

[Awesome. I love the premise of this dream. I'm slightly tempted to write crossover fanfic based on it, but I don't have time to write fanfic.]

I'm in a big building of some kind. I'm high-school-aged, and I'm walking around in the building as part of a group of other high-schoolers [none of whom I recognize individually]. There's a tall table with a bunch of half-sheets of paper on it. They're sign-up sheets where we can sign up for the activities we want to do at an outdoor camp we're going to go to. I and several of my friends sign up for tennis. I think, Since when am I interested in tennis? [I'm not, in real life; I haven't even played it since high-school PE.] I also notice that one of the activities we can sign up for is beer pong. This strikes me as odd, too, since we're high-school students. Then I recall that in a previous dream in this setting [which, once again, I don't recall at all now that I'm awake], I learned that either the drinking age here in this setting is 18, or there isn't one at all, I'm not sure which.

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Side notes:

I managed to have a lucid dream last night, despite having drunk wine several hours before going to bed. I think the fact that the last thing I did before bed was writing and posting a dream journal entry helped a lot. In this dream, I was aware that I was dreaming, but the thought of going off and doing my own thing, rather than going along with the dream plot, didn't even cross my mind. I don't know why not. I also don't remember why or how I became lucid.

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

I'm traveling to Epcot on a highway. The highway is elevated relative to the park, which is long and narrow, and lush and green. There is a giant, inflated jack-o’-lantern in the center of the park. I’m dismayed to realize that the jack-o’-lantern has become the park’s de facto icon; it was never meant to be.

[Different dream.] I'm at a summer camp somewhere. [The day before I had this dream, I'd suddenly, randomly come to the nostalgic realization that it had been a very long time since I'd been to a camp of any kind. Thanks, brain! :-) ] I arrive at a wooden pickup station (sort of like a bus stop) at 8:15 A.M. [I think], in time to get picked up by a horse-drawn, wheeled wagon. I climb up into it and sit down on one of several benches. The wagon takes me and several other campers to an Old Western town where a reenactment activity will take place.

When I get there, I'm really glad I got up in time to catch the wagon, because the town is pretty cool. There are a bunch of animatronic figures that re-enact the shootout at the OK Corral. They have guns that fire styrofoam bullets, which stick to designated, smooth, flat target areas on the other animatronic figures. I move out of the way and take cover while the shootout is going on, not wanting to get hit by the bullets.

When the shootout is over, a large bunch of balloons comes floating toward me. I understand that it’s to transport me back to the point where I entered the town. I take hold of the ribbons on the balloons and allow them to pick me up and float me over some buildings to another part of the town.

I touch down in front of some town official, possibly the mayor or the sheriff. He asks me, “What do you think of the town?”

“I think I’ll stay,” I answer. When I say this, what I mean by it is that I want to get a souvenir picture taken in period costume. There is a kiosk nearby where you can do this. I’m about to do it, but when I look at the signs on the kiosk, I see that the pictures cost $5.00 each. I don’t want to pay $5.00 for a photo, so I change my mind and turn away.

[Dreamskip.] I’m floating with my bunch of balloons again [I think], heading toward a theme park with a roller coaster. I’m thinking about how theme parks are architectural works of art, and should be appreciated as such.

[I waited too long to start writing this, so I don't really remember what happened between the end of that scene and the beginning of the next one, nor do I remember how or why I became lucid.]

I'm in the entrance corridor of a big, fancy office building with a beautifully decorated interior. In front of me is a long wall with a door in it, and a sign next to the door indicating that these are the offices of a financial company. I know that it's a subsidiary of another company, and that it's in charge of the other company's finances.

I think, Okay. I'm going to try to walk through a wall again. I start walking forward, thinking about that goal. I begin to pass through the wall, and the room on the other side becomes visible. I continue moving forward. Even when I've gone far enough that I should be all the way through, I can still see parts of the ornately-decorated wall; they linger in my vision, semi-transparent and seeming to stick with me, like the strands of a spiderweb stick to you when you walk through it. I think, Just keep going forward. They'll go away, and you'll get through. You can do it. I keep moving forward, and the last strands of the afterimage of the wall finally fall away behind me, leaving me standing in the financial offices. There's no tactile sensation this time, though, unlike in my previous lucid dream when I went through the car door; this time, I don't feel anything at all from the wall. I'm happy and proud that I've finally walked through a wall without leaving a hole in it.

I wander through the financial offices a bit. There are employees of the company there, walking around, going about their everyday work. I think, I'm invisible and inaudible to them. Or, if I am visible, I just look like another employee. Somehow, I just know intuitively that one or the other of these things is true.

Eventually, I end up in front of another long wall, this one made of mirrors. [I don't remember now how I got from one scene to the next.] When I find myself in front of this wall of mirrors, I think, Now that I've figured out how to walk through walls, I'd like to try out another dream ability. I wonder if I can create a portal. Remembering what I read in somebody’s DJ here on DreamViews, I use my right index finger to trace a circle on the mirror-wall. [I don't know what exactly made me pick this destination, but] In my thoughts, I pick “heaven” as the destination that I want to be on the other side of the portal. When I'm finished drawing the circle, the area inside it doesn't transform into a portal; instead, it swings inward, like a door on a hinge. I go through the doorway.

The doorway is on one of the short sides of a rectangular room. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the room are all the same dark, metallic slate-gray color. At the opposite end of the room is a raised stage, also that same color, and on the stage is a smaller-than-life-size, cartoon lion. He's very definitely alive, though, and I know who he is immediately. I kneel down on the floor where I am and exclaim, “My Lord Aslan!” [Hmm. Well. That's reassuring.]

[I don't really remember how I got to the next scene. I remember attempting to create another portal and finding only darkness on the other side of the circular door because I hadn't been thinking of any particular destination, but I don't remember whether that was before or after the above scene. In any case, here's the next scene that I do remember.]

I'm now outside the building I was in before, walking across a grassy field. I happen to glance down at my feet and notice that I'm barefoot, and that I appear to have an unusually large number of toes, sticking out at odd angles and overlapping each other in unnatural ways, just like my fingers sometimes do when I look at them in dreams. I look down again, and this time I see that I have eight toes in a neat row on my left foot. It makes me smile to discover that toes can exhibit the same odd behavior as fingers in dreams.

I'm very pleased with my achievements so far tonight, but no other ideas for new abilities to try out come to mind, and the sky and the grass are so inviting, so I decide to fly. I kick off the ground with my right foot and take off. I find myself being forced backward by some unseen, unidentified force, just as I have many times before when I've started flying. I move my fists into the position I learned from my dream dad in my previous lucid, with my left fist close to my chest and my right one further away from my body, and move them back and forth relative to each other, trying to use that new technique I'd just learned to gain control over my flying. It works. I stop feeling the unseen force, and begin flying forward.

[That’s the last I remember of my dream.]

I woke up and found myself still in sleep paralysis. I didn’t feel any vibrations this time, though; it just felt like my arms and legs were really heavy, and like I couldn’t move them even if I tried. I waited a few seconds before moving my arms from their position up over my head. I didn’t even remember putting them there before falling asleep. A few minutes later, the feeling goes away.

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Side notes:

I get to check another goal off my list of lucid-dreaming goals! Yay! I really look forward to continuing to improve my intangibility skills. Now that I've more or less gotten the hang of going through things, my new big goal is to get good at defining, creating, and getting into dream environments of my choice.