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!

[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.

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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.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of June 12-13 and 14-15, 2011.]

Night of June 12-13

There is a murder investigation taking place in a house that looks a lot like my grandparents' house. I am directly involved, and the investigation is highly elaborate and has a detailed plot, with lots of dialog. [Of course, I can't remember any of the specifics now.] Partway through, the dream morphs from live-action into a Tim Burton stop-motion movie featuring the Grim Reaper, who “kills” me. I somehow know I'm not really dead, though. I fall over backwards from the force of the scythe-blow and land in a sling, suspended from a moving, overhead track; it's part of a theme park ride. The ride takes me through “heaven” and ends with me exchanging salutes with Weird Al, who is standing in for Jesus on the ride.

Night of June 14-15

[Bizarre, Disneyland-related dreams FTW! This time,] I'm with a vivacious traveling companion, and we have time-traveled to the year 2011. [Whether backward or forward, I do not know.] We wonder how we know what year it is, until we come up with the obvious answer: “Because that's the year we set the time machine for?”

The entrance to the new version of Star Tours is in a rotating building with revolving doors. [This dream was in anticipation of the upcoming weekend; I was planning to go to Disneyland to ride the new Star Tours the following Sunday, June 19th, and I did.] Inside, there is a loading/staging area for the ride with circular staging zones.

“Abilene!” I say to a 1-year-old girl who is in the staging area with me. “You know you can't be on the end [of the row of seats]!” I take her spot in the staging area, making her and the other little kids move over along the row, toward the outside of the circle.

Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

WARNING: This entry contains potentially triggering adult content. Reader discretion is advised.

Night of April 9-10

I'm walking through an outdoor shopping center somewhere. I'm wearing my white lab coat from work. [It's a costume, not a uniform. I teach in an after-school science enrichment program.] For some reason [that I can't remember now], somebody [possibly one of the handlers of the below-mentioned mascots] signs the end of my right sleeve with a green pen. I'm slightly concerned that my lab coat isn't perfectly white anymore.

A local baseball team mascot walks out of a dentist's office. He has a huge smile made of brilliantly white foam teeth. Seeing him again makes me smile and feel nostalgic, because I haven't seen him in such a long time. The mascot also has a Distaff Counterpart in a much less elaborate, striped, bodysock-like dinosaur costume. There are little kids coming up to and greeting both of them.

Night of April 13-14

I'm watching Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. There's a scene in which Juliet's father, upon finding out what's going on with her and Romeo, rapes her. You can't really see anything, though, since they're both covered by a sheet. The theme song from the movie plays.

Night of April 14-15

I'm at a big party at a house. It's sunset, or just after. The hosts of the party call all the guests to come outside onto the front lawn and sit in several shallow arcs, facing the hosts. I sit down in one of the arcs with a bunch of other party guests, all of whom are actors from various Star Trek TV series, and all of whom are in costume as their characters. The hosts get us started playing a game: We each have to think of the funniest, cleverest Star-Trek-themed pickup line we can, and then we have to take turns sharing them, going in order along the arcs. As my turn is approaching and others are sharing their pickup lines, I struggle to think of something really clever, but I can't. When my turn comes, I say, “Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, yours is the most... hot.” It's definitely not as clever as most of the other pickup lines that people came up with. [None of which I can remember now, of course.]

Night of April 15-16

I'm trying to fit two pieces of rod or pipe together and lock them in place using an interlocking mechanism that is built onto the pipes. They're very dirty and rusty. I discover that I've accidentally broken off one of the parts that are supposed to interlock, so it won't work right.

Non-lucid, Possibly lucid?, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at the mall in my town, standing at the outside edge of the big parking lot on the north side of it. The parking lot is empty because it's been blocked off, and the route for the annual Race for the Cure, which runs around the edges of it, has been marked off. There are lots of people walking and running around the track. This is a practice run for the actual event. I remark to myself that I need to train for this event, because it is a race, and that I'm glad to see that they've repainted some of the lines on the parking lot while they've had it blocked off, because the lines really needed repainting.

From there, I start flying around the west side of the mall. [I think I remember realizing at some point during this sequence that if I was flying, I had to be dreaming. I'm not totally sure, though.] As I go from the north to the west side of it, the terrain changes from flat parking lot to natural land that rises and falls slightly. I'm holding onto a small, rectangular, round-cornered, solid plastic board, slightly larger than a sheet of paper. It catches the wind, and I fly by using it like a sail to pull me along, holding it perpendicular to the ground, with both hands, with my arms straight out in front of me. It's a lot of fun to fly this way. The wind carries me up and over each little rise in the land; every time I go over one, I have to pull my legs up to make sure my feet clear the top of the rise. They do, every time. This entire scene is very clear and vivid; I can feel the air moving around me, the pull of the wind on my arms, and the motions I make, and can see the land and the trees around me clearly.

Someone else passes me on my left, flying past in the opposite direction. As she does so, she holds up a bunch of white pieces of paper, fanned out, with big, black letters printed on them. They spell out “SLOWPOKE!” I don't take any offense at this, because that's fair; this method of flying is indeed slower than my normal self-powered, superhero-style flight.

[Different dream scene.] I'm at a place that seems to be a restaurant, but has a dark ride in the back, meeting a man named Harley Davidson, for whom the company was named.

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

It's after closing time at a big, fancy modern office building, but I have to go back inside to retrieve something. On my way in, I see a couple of my friends from a club I'm in, and say hello to them. Someone closes the door that leads deeper into the interior of the building before I can get to it. There is a sign on the wall next to it that reads “Shift Workers.” Since I don't have a key to this door, I decide that whatever I was going to get can wait until the next day, and abandon my errand. I walk back out of the building and through the glass front doors.

Outside the doors is a wide, concrete entry plaza with concrete stairs leading down to the street on the side opposite the doors. The plaza and the stairs are crowded with people. As I cross the plaza, I meet Ellen Page and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We walk down the stairs together, talking. At the bottom of the stairs, a guy in a movie-quality Darth Maul costume is greeting kids in character.

Ellen, Joe, and I have to get to a meeting or event somewhere else, so we start walking there. Ellen is wearing her teal evening gown [the one she's wearing in the picture I linked to above]. As we walk along a road in a semi-rural area, she carries me by holding her right forearm straight out to the side and parallel to the ground, and letting me sit on it. I can feel my pelvic bones digging into her arm. I wonder if she's doing all right carrying me all this way, since I'm bigger and heavier than she is, but I don't say anything, and she doesn't complain. She starts singing a song in Japanese, one I recognize and know well, so I join in and sing along. I think, I didn't know she was an anime fan. When we get to the end of the song, I identify it: “Digimon, season 1, ending 1.” [That ending song sounds like this in real life, but the song we were singing didn't sound like that at all. It sounded a little more like this one, but not really.] I think, The only other people I've had friendships this close with have been my AmeriCorps friends.

We come upon a park. There are several people there with some dogs that they, and Ellen, identify as Rottweilers, but they have reddish fur and look kind of fox-like. I somehow manage to drop my purse and the series of plastic bags containing the components of our picnic lunch all over the grass, and have to get them back without the dogs attacking me. I start picking them up, saying to Ellen, “I don't give a s*** about the food, I just want my purse back!” I'm scared of the dogs. One of them does end up biting my hand, but more playfully than viciously; I can feel its teeth on my hand. I try to get my hand out of its mouth without tearing the skin on a tooth. [I think] I finally succeed, after I've removed the mask that has slipped down over my eyes so that I can see it again. [I was, as usual, wearing a sleep mask in real life. I also remember having to remove covers from my ears in order to hear people at some point during this dream, but I don't remember when. I didn't have anything in or covering my ears in real life.]

We leave the park, and continue on our way down the road. I am now riding bareback on a big, black cow. Ellen is walking next to it. [Joe had disappeared from the dream entirely by this point.] I can feel the cow's fur, warmth, and movement. We're almost to our destination, which is a boxy, white, one-story set of office buildings on the next block. I think about how many different forms of transportation I've taken on my way to this place: walking, being carried by Ellen, riding in a golf cart, and now riding on a cow. [I don't remember the part of the dream where I rode in a golf cart anymore.] The office building is set back from the road a little bit. Before we get to it, and right up next to the road, there is a stable with a whole herd of black cows in it. The cow I'm riding stops in front of the stable, facing it, and moos. All the other cows moo back. This exchange repeats twice. I dismount from the cow so that she can go into the stable. She gets scared of something and climbs one of the support beams holding the roof of the stable up. She clings to the top of it, now about the size of a human child.

I turn back to face the way we just came. A woman is approaching me on the road. She has a geometric pattern of straight lines with corners all over her tan skin, and is busy putting on a silver loincloth-skirt thing as she walks toward me. I call her “Charissa” as I approach her. That's the last I remember before waking up.

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Side notes:

Two of the last things I did before going to bed last night were watching a Star Wars fan video and working on my current Arthur/Ariadne fanfic. I'm slightly surprised both that those elements showed up in my dreams immediately (unusual for me) and that it wasn't the characters themselves who showed up, but the actors who played them.

This was a really cool, fairly vivid dream with a lot of tactile sensation. I was also amazed to realize upon waking up that I'd slept right through my parents' morning routine, the sounds of which usually prevent me from getting back to sleep for that last cycle. This difference can probably be explained by the fact that I didn't get to sleep until after midnight last night, which is later than I usually do these days.

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

[I had four different dreams last night.]

[Dream #1] I'm at the apartment building where I lived in Japan. There are several different landlords who own parts of the building, which is reflected in the fact that different parts of the facade have different designs. [Of course, this was not the case in real life.] Inside the building, though, instead of many small apartments, there is one big, open space crisscrossed by wooden support beams. A few other people my own age are in the building. Several of the wooden beams are arranged in a tall pyramid shape, supporting a large heating/air conditioning unit at the apex of the pyramid. This pyramid collapses and the unit crashes to the floor. At first, I think it's killed the young man who appeared to be standing directly under it, but then I see that he's okay, just scratched up a bit.

One of the other people in this large, open space is President Obama. I follow him up into an enclosed hallway and eavesdrop on a phone conversation he's having with his wife. From the conversation, I gather that he's going to pay for repairs to the damaged support structure and HVAC unit.

[Dream #2] I'm riding on Ellen's Energy Adventure in Epcot. The ride vehicles move up to get to the room with the screens for the film portion of the attraction; I can feel the vehicle moving upward. We get to that room, and the film begins. The film starts out on only one screen, then widens to fill the wraparound screens on either side of it as well, but there are no curtains that pull back to reveal the additional screens. [There were curtains when I went on this ride in reality back in 2000, but according to an article I just read recently, they're not working anymore.] The film contains lots of exciting action sequences, punctuated and made more immersive and realistic by air jets built into the backs of the seats. The seats also have lap bars; I can feel mine. At some point during the film, it dawns on me that I'm dreaming. When the film ends, I exit the ride along with everyone else. As I walk along my row of seats, I say to the guy walking in front of me, “Hey! You're a dream character!” Again, I don't get his attention at all. I continue walking through the passageways that lead out of the building. They're very dark; I make sure to pay close attention to the people and the edges of walls that I can see by the few dim lights, because I know that if I don't, the dream will fade. As I walk, I sing a song aloud, which was my lucid goal for the night. [I don't recall now which song it was, but I have the vague impression that it was a current country song, one I know well, sung by a male singer.] It doesn't even occur to me to do anything other than go along with the dream scenario; this is a ride at Epcot, so of course I'm going to go along with it and enjoy the experience.

There's a bottleneck along the exit route that slows down the flow of foot traffic. This makes me go, “Huh? What's going on?” Then I see what's causing the bottleneck: Suspended by individual cords from a track on the ceiling are multiple pairs of 3D glasses with polarized lenses, with no earpieces, so you have to hold them up to your eyes. Each cord is attached to a little wheel inside the track, so you can move the 3D glasses back and forth along the track. This passageway is filled with painted, Star-Wars-themed scenery, and when you look through the glasses, the scenery looks 3D. I take a pair of glasses and walk with them the rest of the way out of the building. I say aloud, “Oh my God! Rope-Trak!” [While in the dream, I remembered a dream I had when I was a kid that featured a very similar system, only with harnesses attached to the ends of the cords instead of the 3D glasses. In that dream, the purpose of the system was to make sure everyone at a museum followed the same path through the exhibits. I named this system “Rope-Trak” after the fact, when I was awake and used the dream as inspiration for a school project.] I'm surprised and pleased to see this concept reappear in another dream.

I reach the outside of the building. This outdoor space looks very much like I remember it, and I can see everything clearly in the natural light. However, the sky is overcast and cloudy, and it's either raining or just about to; a hurricane is coming in. The dream ended here.

[Dream #3] I'm at my high school, just outside the gymnasium, looking south. Apparently, just being there is enough to make me realize I'm dreaming. It's nighttime, and the quad is filled with students. I decide to fly; it takes me two tries to take off. My first try turns into a big, parabolic jump. The second time, I succeed in getting airborne. To help launch myself forward, I kick off the wall of the gym with my foot, as one might kick off the wall of a pool while swimming. Among the crowd, I see the B. brothers again as I pass overhead. I think, They didn't go to my high school. I fly higher and see that the school is surrounded on two sides by ocean, which makes me go, “Huh?”

[Dream #4] I'm riding in the back seat of the brown car down a street in my old city. It's nighttime. I know where I am because I recognize the trees and landscaping on either side of the car. Looking out my window, I see a white car flying along, above and to the left of our car. This clues me in that I'm still dreaming. I wonder if I can make this car fly. Almost as soon as I've decided to try to do so, I find myself sitting in the driver's seat, alone in the car. I immediately realize that I'm now alone and driving the car, rather than riding in the back seat while someone else drove, because I had wanted/expected to be the driver. My dream control is improving. Cool.

The car is still going down the street at the same speed it was before. I make the same effort of will I used in my previous dream to fly on my own, only this time, I try to focus my will on the car rather than on my own body. As before, I concentrate on the thought of the object of focus rising up, on how that should feel. It takes noticeably more effort, but it works. I get the car into the air. However, I find that it's now traveling backward, and I can't get it to go forward. Looking out the front windshield and over the landscape, I notice that the moon is low on the horizon ahead of me and to the left, looks normal, and is full. Then the dream faded and I woke up.

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of December 5-6

I'm attending a service at an unfamiliar church. I'm in the choir. The bishop is there, and he shushes the choir, ending the song we're singing early. Two other famous people are there: Arnold Schwarzenegger and H. [a writer who is on the Internet and likely to search for himself]. The two of them and the bishop pose for a group picture. H. is wearing a big, floppy USC baseball cap. We all tell him to turn it around and wear it so that the logo is showing, or else there's no point in having it on at all. He actually looks more like my real-life friend Victor K. than he looks like H.

The service also involves honoring some military people. There is a man in a very highly decorated, green military dress uniform there.

Night of December 6-7

[This was a long, fun, interesting dream with a really cool setting and particularly good recall, especially for dialog.]

This dream is set within the world of a TV show called “Cruiser Island.” Cruiser Island is one of a small group of small, tropical islands, very close together, located just off the coast of Florida and connected to each other and to the mainland by bridges. One of its neighboring islands is called Alo Island. There is a large, single-story building there that says “Alo Island Public Hospital” on the sign on the front.

House #1 is located on Cruiser Island. My family is hosting a sort of sleepover there. I'm in my bedroom, in the top bunk (which is mine), wearing pajamas, ready to go to bed. A boy who's maybe 8 or 9 years old climbs up the end of the bunk bed to get into the top bunk, and we talk. He says he's afraid of some kind of wild animal, and I reassure him by saying that we're in the middle of downtown, and no wild animals are coming here. The rest of the conversation goes something like this:

Me: What's your name?
Boy: Thomas.
Me: Yeah, I thought you kinda looked like a Thomas. I'm (Emiko). (we shake hands)
Thomas: You know that guy who sings with the Parish girls... I'm his younger brother.
Me: Oh, you're Dom's brother!

I decide I enjoy spending time with kids.

[Note: In the dream, when Thomas mentioned his older brother, I knew who we were talking about and knew that he shared a first name with, but wasn't, the protagonist from Inception. In real life, both brothers sang with the Parish girls, but only once, two days ago. They also have different first names in real life.]

I'm standing on the floor next to the foot end of the bunk bed. There are two Vietnamese women, a mom and a grandma, who are sleeping on the lower bunk. Two more Vietnamese moms are standing around in the room and in the hallway, along with a whole bunch of their kids. One of the moms says something about how she doesn't have magical Japanese eyes [I don't even know.] and then sternly commands all the boys to go and brush their hair, now, so that they can go to bed. All the girls have their hair in braids or pigtails, so they'll need their moms' help to comb it out. I think, With all these people in the house for the sleepover and all this excitement, my sleep cycle is getting completely thrown off. I'm not going to get a chance to try to lucid dream tonight. That's too bad. [And yet, I still somehow managed not to realize that I was dreaming at this point. I laughed when I remembered this thought upon waking up.]

I go into the bathroom to toss a few of my stray hairs into the trash can. I don't just toss them on the floor because of all the guests we have in the house. While I'm in the bathroom, I see that my gold cross necklace has fallen into the toilet. Also, I find some bedbugs somewhere in the house, crawling all over some white paper thing. I take it outside, showing it to my mom and explaining to her, as we walk along a sidewalk outside, what they are and what it's like to have them in the house. I say that I'm pretty sure I just got rid of all of them.

My mom and I continue walking through Cruiser Island's downtown, which looks a lot like San Luis Obispo's downtown, until we reach a small light rail station on the street. We look at the big, dark-blue metal signboard there to find out what its schedule is. We continue walking along the streets, turning at least one corner and passing one more light rail station. The street signs are white on blue like in L.A. [not white on brown like in the real SLO]. I talk to someone I pass on the street about which of the streets will be closed for the parade that's going to start soon.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of November 25-26.]

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

I'm attending a writers' workshop at the home of author Beverly Cleary. Every single wall of the house is completely covered with filled bookshelves. I'm walking through the house, picking my way among people in sleeping bags lying on the floor.

Dreamskip. Now everyone is awake and listening to Cleary speak. She announces to all the attendees that she's retiring from writing. Her assistant says: “Does anyone have any questions? Real questions? Realer questions?”

One of the other attendees asks if anyone else there is willing to answer a question, and I volunteer to answer it, saying, “I can make a halfhearted effort at answering.” I say this because I don't think my answer can possibly be anywhere near as good as Cleary's. The assistant introduces me to the other attendee with the question as the author of the forthcoming novel “Artist.” In the dream, I know that the assistant is referring to my current NaNoWriMo novel [the one I was working on in real life when I had this dream], but I think, That's not the right title. [At that point, I hadn't given that novel a title yet in real life, but I still somehow knew that that wasn't the right one.] The other attendee gives me a thin ARC [Advance Reader Copy] of his (or her? I'm not sure) new book, and asks me if I'm interested in reading it and how long it would take me to read it. I am interested, because it has Piers Anthony's name on it as a reference, and is obviously high fantasy based on the cover design. I flip through it and say, “I could read this in an hour, maybe two.”

The other attendee and I walk through the house, which is crowded with workshop attendees. In the room where we end up, there are some people sitting around a picnic table, and David C. is one of them. The other attendee who gave me the ARC asks me something about what the group dynamic at this writers' workshop is like. I answer, then start telling him (her?) about the characteristics of the T./M. Writers' Group [I don't know of one in real life, besides the NaNoWriMo group] and F. Writers Read. Then I woke up. This one was so cool that I thought about trying to DEILD back in, but I didn't because I knew I'd already moved around too much.

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Side notes:

This dream was awesome. Not only did I have particularly good recall, especially for the many spoken conversations in the dream, but even better, somebody introduced me as the author of a forthcoming novel. Being the author of a published novel is one of my biggest real-life goals. Also, the night I had this dream was the night before Black Friday, and I had set a goal for that day of breaking my previous personal record for the most words of fiction written in a single day. I succeeded. I think this dream indicates that my intention to finish the draft I've started without stopping at the end of November had taken root firmly in my mind. Rawk.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of November 18-19, 2010.]

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

I'm in a theater, watching a film that turns out to be really scary and disturbing. The film begins with one Congressman sitting behind his desk in his office, while another is standing in front of his desk, calling him out on his shenanigans. The one behind the desk dies of a heart attack a few seconds after the one standing up finishes ranting. The ranter then starts an investigation of the one who died.

At this point, the film's narrator says, "The more he found, the more he refused to see." The Congressman performing the investigation stays in one place [I think it may have been the dead one's office, but I'm not positive] for such a long time that he eventually survives by cannibalism. One of the things he finds while investigating is a bag of marijuana, which he goes through, looking for cigarette butts. At the end of the film, there is a message from his family, left in vinyl-cling letters on the window: he got out and is now getting help.

The film ends, and I exit the theater and walk down the long flight of wide steps leading up to it. The theater is located inside Disneyland. [I've been having dreams featuring bizarre versions of Disneyland since I was a child, but this one really takes bizarre to a new level.] It's a beautiful, sunny afternoon. I walk through Fantasyland and into Toontown; the two share a long, open border with each other, with no transition point or hard line of demarcation between them. Riding on a moving walkway, I go past a turnaround mechanism for the Skyway - the big wheel that keeps the cable with all the buckets attached to it moving and allows the buckets to turn around and go back the other way. It is at ground level. The cable is there, has buckets attached to it, and is moving, but there's no loading/unloading station there, just the turnaround mechanism, all by itself.

I walk past Mickey's house. The path through Toontown dead-ends into a section of the queue for the Roger Rabbit ride. I decide I might as well stay there and get in line, now that I'm there; it was only about 4:00 P.M. the last time I looked at the time, so I have plenty of time to enjoy myself. [D'oh! Should have RCed.] I get in line, walking through an opening into the enclosed, indoor space where the queue is. I walk past a group of Cast Members who are singing a barbershop-quartet rendition of "Stray Cat Strut." I wait for them to finish, then tell them that I know where I'm supposed to go to get to the back of the line, and I'm not taking cuts in the line. They understand and let me pass. One of the Cast Members lets me get in line in front of him. This puts me in line directly behind Gary Coleman and some other little people. We introduce ourselves to each other politely; he goes first. I realize that I'm dreaming just as it's ending, when it's too late to do anything; I can already feel my real body.

I'm at a high school, in a room that has chairs in it, but no desks (possibly the drama classroom). One DC is talking at great length to a group of other DCs on the subject of her facial reconstruction surgery. I pull up a chair, joining the group, and listen. I introduce myself to the DC who has been talking. As we're shaking hands, she introduces herself to me as Anne-Marie. She says that she's ugly, and I automatically answer, "No, you're not." [She reminds me a little bit of real-life friend Dawn B. from college, now that I think of it.] She has dirty-blond hair in a ponytail, pale skin, and sunken, brown eyes. She has a black eye on one of them. I know nothing about her appearance is her fault, though, and I like people to be happy with themselves, so that's why I told her she wasn't ugly. In reply to my denial that she's ugly, she says, "Oh, are you another furry?" I answer, "No, but I am an anime fan." I know that she's an anime fan, too. We chat a bit more, and the conversation ends with our agreeing to eat lunch together.

At the end of the conversation, I have another “Oh, yeah, I'm dreaming” moment. The realization comes easily and naturally, the only specific trigger being that I'm in an unfamiliar place. [I had been MILDing again, so when I found myself lucid dreaming, I accepted and realized it readily because it was what I was expecting.] I take a look around. The classroom is irregularly-shaped, high-ceilinged, and sunlit from skylights. Visual clarity is good. I get down on the floor to feel the carpet, which is short, institutional, and gray. I start crawling on the carpet through the room, remarking to myself aloud: “I don't have any energy today. It's my own fault; I should have gone to bed earlier.” My dream body feels just as tired and sluggish as I know my real one does at this early hour of the morning. I've never experienced this in a lucid dream before, so I find it strange, so I comment on it and come up with a logical explanation for it.

“Why am I wearing this heavy backpack, anyway?” I say to myself, because, I realize, I am wearing one. It feels just like the ones I carried in junior high and high school, so it must be full of textbooks. I take it off, one strap at a time, and let it roll off my back and onto the floor. “That's better... a little,” I say. I can feel the absence of its weight, and I feel a little less tired, but not totally back to normal.

There is a full-length mirror on one side of the room. I stand up and go to look at myself in it. My hair is wavy again, and this time, it reaches all the way to my waist. “Oh, cool!” I say. “That's so pretty! I've always wanted it to be like this!” [While it certainly was pretty, I know very well that actually having hair that long would be really impractical... but, yeah, there evidently is a part of my mind that misses having long hair.] I'm wearing a bright sky-blue T-shirt with pink hearts and gold and silver swirls and sparkles on it, and a long, blue denim wraparound skirt. While looking at my reflection in the mirror, I reach for the outer flap of my skirt with my hands and try to touch it, but I can't feel anything there. When I look down at the skirt itself and try again, though, I can feel it. [That's a pretty cool and interesting difference between dreams and reality, and more (anecdotal) evidence that whatever you concentrate your direct perception on, your mind works harder to create.] I woke up after that.

[This is a catch-up journal entry. This dream is from the night of November 6-7.]

[Fragments] Something involving making a delivery of some kind using my car. I remember wondering where my car keys were just as I was waking up from the dream. I also remember riding my old, green GT bike in the rain.

IHOP and Denny's are having a TV commercial war. I'm watching a series of commercials for the two chains, one after the other. One of them [I'm not sure which restaurant it was for] focuses on the repetition of the phrase, “Accurate fries, accurate donuts,” accompanied by images of the two items. It means that when you order fries or mini-donuts as a side item there, they always serve you the correct amount. Later, I'm at Denny's with my mom.

I'm riding in a car, passing by the fields of a local high school. I can see their marching band rehearsing, in their uniforms. Some marching band members from my own high school are there, too, also in their uniforms and rehearsing in a block.

I'm walking through the hallways of an unidentified high school. A female student is there, loudly crowing away about something political. The TV monitors mounted in the hallway are showing political advertisements. There's one pro-Whitman, anti-Brown ad that ends with the spoken line, “Last chance to come together, California.”

I'm in a UCSB dorm room, thinking to myself: What's the date today? April 9? 2 months. Meaning, in two months, I will be graduating and leaving the university forever. I think about how hard I'm going to cry when I have to pack up the contents of this room and leave it for the last time. I remember [or maybe I just inferred this after having woken up, I'm not sure] that I went to Kentucky during fall quarter, then returned to UCSB for the winter and spring quarters to finish up the last of my studies. [As opposed to real life, where it was spring quarter that I missed to go to Kentucky.] My roommate Sarah M. is in the room. I have to be on my way and go to math class without my math homework completed, because I've been goofing off all weekend.

A group of Chinese international students and teachers come into the dorm room. One of the female teachers notices a magnet I have as a decoration. The magnet has five Chinese characters on it. She reads them aloud, in Chinese, but stumbles over the last one, giving two different possible readings for it. As she puzzles over the characters, I say to her, in Japanese, “Imi mo nai na no da.” [Translation: “They don't even mean anything.”] I know this to be the case because I know that this particular string of characters came from Hanzi Smatter. The female teacher understands what I said, and agrees with me. She and the other teachers and international students then start a conversation, all in Japanese. When they ask me a question in Japanese, my reaction is, “Oh, God, now I've started it!” I'm nervous and self-conscious because I haven't spoken any Japanese in a long time. It takes me a second, but I manage to formulate an answer to the question in perfectly good Japanese. [I don't remember what the question and answer were, but I do remember that] At some point during the conversation, I say something like, “Kono kanji wa imi ga nai to itte kumatta desu.” I know what I mean when I say it, which is, “I heard that these kanji don't mean anything.” [But I know perfectly well that those aren't the proper Japanese words for “I heard that...” There goes dream!Japanese being weird again.] [Also, what I meant is that they don't mean anything as a phrase. Most likely they mean something individually, or else the teacher wouldn't have been able to identify readings for them.]

[Not sure if this one is in the correct chronological order.] I'm with my church choir, and we're singing a pretty Advent hymn. [I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in reality, yet. I managed to record six notes onto my phone when I woke up, and someday I plan to compose it.]

I'm driving up toward UCSB with my parents. We see Dale C. performing live on the side of the road, by the exit off Highway 217 that leads to the airport. He's singing and playing the bongos.

I'm reading a little cloth book that Dale wrote about his music career. In the book, he says that he was more excited about the full-time income he would earn from being a musician than any other aspect of the career. This makes me think less of him.

I enter an unfamiliar house to get something. P. is there, and there is an unknown woman sleeping in the back room.

[Fragment] I'm in dream!Las Vegas, passing behind the back sides of several of the large casinos. There is a wide strip of empty desert between me and the buildings.

[Longer dream] I'm in a sort of club with dark-brown wood on all the walls, being followed around by a cartoony-looking blonde girl with pigtails, close to my own age. While I'm there, I get a phone call from the coordinator of our tour group (yes, I'm on a tour as part of a tour group) saying that they're offering me the opportunity to extend the tour for a couple of hours, and if I want to take them up on it, I should meet them at the nearest [some kind of store whose name I can't recall].

So I head for the exit of the club. There are steps leading down from the door of the club onto a large, open space of concrete, which is on a street corner. As I leave the club, I realize that I'm surrounded by several of my favorite actors, who are leaving it at the same time as I am. Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor are there, and I hear Patrick Stewart's voice. I don't speak to them, though, because I don't want to bother them with my fangirling while they're trying to hang out and have fun. I know that I'm in Barcelona, and that the club I'm just leaving is known for being a popular hangout for famous people.

Out on the street corner, I see the aforementioned some-kind-of-store directly across the street from the entrance to the club. It has a green awning with white letters on it. I decide not to go there, though, because I see all the other people from my tour group walking along the street and turning the corner to go up a side street. I decide to stick with the group. The cartoony-looking blonde girl is part of the group, too, but she hasn't come out of the club yet. “She'll catch up,” I say, and start walking up the street with the group. The street goes uphill. We walk several blocks, turn at least one more corner, and end up on an open-air elevated light rail car. I sit in the corner seat on the end of the car that points in the direction it's traveling. It starts moving and goes really fast along the track. It's quite thrilling when it turns a corner, and I cheer and whoop in exhilaration, as if I were on a roller coaster.

Eventually, the track for the vehicle we're in ends abruptly, high above a river that has broad beaches along its banks. Somehow, the vehicle has morphed into one of those circular whitewater rafts, like the ones they have on Grizzly River Run at Disney California Adventure. Our raft shoots off the end of the track and starts falling toward the river. I know that we're not actually falling all that distance, because we're inside a simulator ride. The raft starts tumbling and turning end over end as it falls through the air, but I don't feel the sensation of being turned upside down, and I know that that's because I'm not actually being turned upside down, it's just the video in the simulator ride making it look like I am. Just before our raft hits the water, I realize that it's going to hit with enough force to plunge pretty deeply into the water before floating back to the surface again. I hold my breath just to play along with the simulation, even though I know it is one, and, indeed, there is no real water; I don't feel wet, but I see the deep-green-tinted underwater video all around me. [LOL! Maybe this is what happens when MILDing is only partially successful? ]