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, [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.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 30-31, 2010.]

I'm in a classroom in Britain. We're playing a game that involves the chalkboard, and walking in between two desks.

I'm in a room (possibly a hotel room; there's a bed in it, anyway) with Q [from Star Trek: The Next Generation]. I attempt to walk through one of the walls of the room, but get stuck halfway through it, and yell at him for messing with me. He manifests a bouncy ball made out of water, and we both bounce it back and forth.

[Dreamskip.] I'm still in that same room, but now I'm lying down on the floor under the bed. I'm stuck there somehow and can't get up. Q and some random (apparently) human woman are having sex on the bed. It's way too hot and stuffy in the room, and I'm starting to feel like there's no air in there. I get up and open the door. There's a screen door behind it. Later, I explain to Q why I did that. I say, “Did you forget that I needed oxygen to breathe?” He doesn't seem to mind that I opened the door.

I'm at a party with my mom and a bunch of her teacher friends. We're all on an outdoor patio of a restaurant at first, and then we all get into a rectangular ride vehicle that [somehow] works as a Gravitron. We all strap ourselves into our seats, and the vehicle starts moving forward. While it's moving, I look at a door on the side of the vehicle, labeled Door #6. I don't think it's closed all the way, so I reach over and try to close it, but I end up opening it. This makes the ride shut down, since I've just depressurized the cabin, and makes everyone else on the ride angry at me. A voice over the loudspeaker says, “Next time, the useless will have no reason to be here.” I defend myself by saying, “I didn't know how to close it!” An alarm is going off. I woke up at this point.

------------------
Side notes:
I realized after I woke up from this dream that, for the second time since I've been keeping a regular dream journal, sense data from my real body came through into my dream. In this case, it was so cold on this night that I slept with all the blankets pulled up over my head. I really was trying to breathe hot, stuffy air in reality, so that became true in my dream, too. I think that's a pretty cool phenomenon.

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post from two nights ago, which was the night before an examination. As I was going to bed, I tried to concentrate on the ideas that were going to be on the exam, hoping that I would dream about them. It worked... but not in the way I'd hoped. My commentary on the dream will include explanations of what parts of it relate to the exam.]

[Dream #1] I'm making a scrapbook. I'm brushing clear, rubber-cement-like glue onto the bristles of another kind of brush, to glue it onto something flat. The handle of the brush I'm using to apply the glue breaks, so I have to apply it by holding on to the outer part of the bottle instead. Satoshi and other characters from the Pokémon anime series are there. [I can see why I was dreaming about scrapbooking: it's a method of committing things to memory, which is what I had been doing all day to prepare for the exam.]

[Dream #2] I'm visiting Fallingwater.

Picture #1

Picture #2

As I approach the entrance, I feel absolute awe at the beauty of this place, and it shows on my face. There's a big, dramatic, semi-enclosed entryway with dark brown walls; the main doors are on the left as you're walking through the channel that the entryway forms, and directly across from them is a low patio coffee table and some patio chairs, facing onto the walkway. Several of my professors from college are sitting in those chairs, including the one who taught the art history class focusing on architecture in which I first learned about this building [in real life]. I stop and chat with him about how wonderful it is to be there. He remembers me, and says that he's there to work. I say that I'm there on vacation.

I enter the building through the entryway. Inside, there's a child-care room, full of older kids and teens who would be bored by the tour of the place. There is a silent radio in the room to announce when kids who are in there are being kicked out of it for bad behavior and released back to their parents. It says things like, “(Kid's name) is now under the direct guardianship of her mother.” I watch from a third-person perspective as one of the teenage girls in the room offers to have sex with one of the teenage boys. There follows a non-graphic, narrative description thereof, without any visuals.

The child-care room is located just off of a large, open entry hallway, also dark brown and clearly built after the fact, especially for the tourists. There is a sign that says “Photographers will be shot,” as in, with a sniper rifle. [I know it's a famous landmark and all that, but that's awfully harsh!] [The exam was on the subject of data network architecture, so of course, it makes sense that I would dream about one of the most famous works of architecture ever built. Even though it didn't help me with the exam, I thought this was a pretty awesome dream. I'd love to visit the real Fallingwater someday.]

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

Last night, my WBTB went on for nearly fifteen minutes, due to my trying (and failing) to figure out what it was that had gone thump and woken me up. I think it helped me attain lucidity. I should do WBTBs that last that long more often.

I'm bicycling along a sidewalk that winds through grass along the side of a street. Every so often, the sidewalk rises up and becomes a little bridge that allows water to go under it. It goes up-and-down and side-to-side so much that it's a little difficult to bicycle on.

I'm in a building with a group of my Literacy AmeriCorps friends. We're in an open, interior space that runs through several stories of the multi-story building, and has lots of staircases and landings in it. My LAC friends are standing around on the staircases and landings. We're talking about the party that's going on in a room upstairs. One of my friends says that, in order to get in, you have to bribe the guy watching the door in a “touchy-feely” way, e.g., by touching him in a sexual way. I absolutely refuse to do this. At some point during this conversation, I realize, “This is a dream. I can't really be talking to these people.” [I haven't seen any of them in reality since the program ended; we don't even live in the same state anymore.] Then, a bunch of unidentified guys come up a flight of stairs from deeper in the building and start trying to molest me and the other girls with their hands. As they begin to surround me like a flood, I realize this is turning into a nightmare, and try to leave the scene by closing my eyes and turning around. Once again, it does absolutely nothing. The guys start getting their hands on me, and achieve their goal of discovering where my erogenous zones are. I'm scared and shocked and I wish it would end, so it does. I wake up, and go back to sleep shortly afterward.

I'm in a room where I and three of my LAC friends, one other girl and two guys, have been staying. I find a guitar in the closet. A tall guy I don't recognize is also in the room. One of us asks, “Who in this room plays guitar?” and the other answers with “Lisa C.” and one or two other names. [I can't remember now who said what, or what the other two names were.]

I'm in a giant, room-sized aquarium. It's rectangular and about twelve feet from floor to ceiling, and all but the top three feet are filled with fresh water. One wall of the rectangular room is covered with small, enclosed plastic boxes, each containing a different kind of fish. You can open up the doors on the front of each box to let the fish out into the larger aquarium. I'm swimming in the water and can apparently breathe under it. I'm playing with the fish that are out in the larger aquarium, trying to get them to act out some scenario, but it isn't working out too well because there's this one carnivorous fish with big, pointy teeth that keeps eating most of the smaller fish. Eventually, it even starts eating another fish that's bigger than itself. I swim up to the very top row of little boxes, one of which contains a Blue Tang. I think about letting it out, but decide not to because I'm not sure if this one is a freshwater fish or not, and because I don't have very many of that kind. At this point, I discover that I suddenly can't breathe as easily under the water, and I realize that it's because the top three feet of the room are now filled with water, too. [Yes, I realize that doesn't make much sense. No, I didn't realize this during the dream, nor did I realize I was dreaming.] I go to the end of the room and start trying to get the door open so I can breathe the air outside the room. It has a wheel on it that you turn to open the door. While I'm still trying to open the door, before I can either drown or get it open, I wake up. [Dude. That was pretty cool. I wanna go back and play in the aquarium room again sometime.]