The Lab Notebook

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.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Half-awake, half-dream state, [Commentary made while awake]

While out of the house somewhere, I put on a navy-blue, stretchy headband [that I have in real life], and make some kind of wish. This causes me to suddenly have long hair again [I cut my real hair short at the beginning of this month]. My hair is down to my shoulder blades, which is still a little shorter than it was when I cut it, and seems thinner and wavier than it used to be when it was long. I don't want my mom to see me with my hair long again, because if she did, I would have to explain to her about the magical headband. So, when I return home, I do my best to avoid letting her see me.

I consider re-cutting my hair myself, but decide I don't want to, because it wouldn't come out very neat. I decide instead to go back and find the stretchy headband and make another wish to reverse the effects of the first one. I ask my mom if I can use the car to run an errand. She asks what it is, and I answer that I'm going to a vacant lot to look for something I lost. This is true, but it's not the whole truth.

I get into the brown car, and someone is in the front passenger seat. [My dad, I think.] I say to him, “Watch the street signs. I don't even know my own neighborhood in these dreams.” And they'll probably change, I think. I back the car out of the garage, turn it to my left, and continue backing in that direction all the way down to the corner, where the street turns 90 degrees. [In this dream, this corner is now a 90-degree turn like it is in reality, not a four-way intersection like it was in the first dream described in my dream journal entry dated 10/08/10.] Sure enough, as we drive down the street backwards and then back up the street going forward, each street sign says something different the second time we pass it than it did the first time we passed it. The street signs are all blue with white letters [not green with white letters, as they are in reality]. Eventually, I find the street I'm looking for and turn left onto it.

The next scene seems to take place in a fast-food restaurant. I find the headband I was looking for and restore my short haircut. [For this part of the dream, I was in “video-game-controller” mode again, as I described in my dream journal entry dated 10/21/10. I was kind of removed from the action and aware that it was all going on in my mind/imagination, and at the same time, I was fully aware of my real body.]

Woke up at 1:36 A.M., took some notes on my dream, went back to bed.

My parents and I are attending a wedding at the estate of some really rich people. The estate has a little re-creation of a neighborhood from old-timey New York, and the little church in that neighborhood is being used for the ceremony. In one room, an old man, the father or grandfather of the groom, I think, is lying on a hospital bed, all dressed up for the ceremony and being included in the festivities. After the ceremony, they make everyone attending the wedding pose for a group picture. My dad wants to put some sand in containers to use it to stabilize some photography equipment, so he gets out a bunch of sand toys, and I help him shovel sand into buckets. The people who own the estate are originally from Thailand, and they've recreated the beaches of Thailand on their estate. The sand we're shoveling is filled with beautiful blue-and-white seashells, colorful stones and jewels, and gold dust.

Woke up at 3:36 A.M., took some notes, went back to bed.

I'm at my old high school, walking across campus, looking for the classroom of one of my old teachers. I get to the western edge of campus, where the furthest-out portable classrooms used to be, and discover that there's a sort of ravine there, with concrete stairs leading down the near side and up the far side. On the far side of the ravine stand the furthest-out portables. I'm not really surprised that so much has changed in the years since I've been away.

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An aside:

When I cut my hair short in reality, it was after many years of having long hair. I've been wondering for a while whether or not my dream self (if I may steal some jargon from the Matrix universe, my residual self-image) would still have long hair. Not surprisingly, thinking about this over a period of time caused me to dream about it. I find it interesting, and reassuring, that after only three weeks of having short hair in reality, even my dream self apparently feels that that's the norm, and that having long hair feels wrong.

Also, I'm pleased with the increasing frequency of my lucid dreams, but disappointed with my lack of control. I keep realizing that I'm dreaming and either not trying to do or change anything at all, or trying and failing. I will continue trying to improve.