Liolar

29th October 2014

Not a particularly exciting one, but I figured I'd plonk it down for posterity, as it's the first entry in which I've began writing "Dream Notes" at the end, in accordance with a Dream Journal Tutorial I read a while back:

A few recollections from tonight, patchy though they may be. In the first scene, I had gone for a dinner with an old couple; something told me that the older man was either a close family friend or well-known distant relative. He had a gaunt face, was exceptionally skinny with ribbed, wrinkled hands, and was bald but for a few tufts of white hair sprouting up from above his ears; his wife was a large-apron wearing type, and I don't remember seeing her face. Their house was a pleasant place, with an old-time French country feel about it, with rustic wooden counters and floors. We sat down for a meal, though I don't remember what was said.

There was a drive back somewhere in a black Volkswagen Beetle. I sat in the back with the old man, a third person dream camera focused on us, I was on the left and he was on the right (according to the camera's point of view; it would've been the other way 'round for us). He looked very weak, and leaned into my ear to say something ominous in a croaked voice, something about knowing something or someone was coming for me. All I knew was that I ought to be scared, and I was.

We returned to a caravan site where I'd been staying; it was typical fare, a few grassy patches, an ugly square toilet block with wheelie bins put out in front of it, not very many trees. As I observed the toilet-block, a horrible thought dawned on me about what the old man meant; the Gestapo were coming, I knew. This was an alternate realty in which the Nazis won WWII! (I've been reading a book called Fatherland by Robert Harris recently, set in such a world, which would explain this). I ran, getting a first person view through my then-caravan, which was pretty messy, with wooden floors and pans lying all over the cooker; oddly dim and long for a caravan, but I thought nothing of it. That scene (rummaging through the caravan) was probably briefly after the scene I had about to write, come to think of it: Through what few trees there were, a little kid came in a light blue T-shirt; he had short-cropped blonde hair. He said something to me, and before I knew it, the scene suddenly jumped:

We were now on a grassy bank, a large Omega Elite parked on the edge of the hill, and a thick mist ahead, with a vaguely discernible mesh fence only just piercing the gloom. The kid was sitting in the driver's seat, and I was trying to discourage him from starting the car, but he was having none of it; he turned the key in the ignition. I grabbed the key and turned it back, I felt irritated, but no overtly angry.Something told me he was intending to help me against the Gestapo. There was a scene where he was standing outside my caravan on a slightly brighter morning, which looked smaller on the outside, and had a cream tarpaulin canopy over the door; I was standing in cream clothing, the same colour as the canopy, with a mug of coffee, the dream camera in third person; the kid was telling me something, and we had apparently teamed up despite our altercation over the car, but I don't remember what was said, or what happened next, as it was at this point that I woke up. That's all I can recall of tonight's dreams.

Dream Notes: Slept for about 7.5 hours considering awakenings/margins of error. The dream didn't feel particularly long, maybe 40 or 50 minutes, stretched over all scenes, even though there seemed to be time-skips and jump-cuts. I fell asleep at about 3:20 a.m, dreamed briefly of something I don't remember, waking an hour later at about 4:31 a.m, then fell asleep again until about 11:30 a.m. I would put the dream's vividness about 5/10, and my awareness at about 2/10. Emotions felt: Anxiety, fear, irritation, protectiveness (during the car scene). There weren't anything I've yet recorded as a dream sign, but I think I should start to consider caravans as such, as I realise they've appeared in a number of my dreams thus far. I didn't really bother using my MILD technique tonight, I just told myself that I wanted to at least recall my dream unlike the previous night, which I did successfully. I had to lay still for a while to recall everything.

22nd October 2014:

Not an awful lot of recollection tonight, but some. At some point I think I was in a sushi restaurant, one of those ones with the tanks where you can pick the fish out that you want to eat. The place was dingy and indistinct, and I couldn't really make out an awful lot of the place, but the arches and general architecture of the place reminded me of a seafood restaurant I had been in during a dream that I had last month.

The next bit of dream that I remember took place in a towering, circular Roman colosseum; it was taller than it was wide, and its thick Ionic pillars were stacked on top of one another in ascending arches. The sun beat down from a blue sky above, and I don't remember seeing many clouds. The dream camera focused on a view of Sergei Dragunov (you can see him in my profile picture; I play a lot of Tekken and use him a lot, hence his presence); he was lying on the ground looking up at a tall, looming figure, crawling backwards as if in terror. His gas mask was missing (I have him customised in the game so that he usually wears one), and his hair was slightly longer, wild and unkempt, as if he'd been in a scuffle. The dream then focused on a view of the figure that was looming over him; he wasn't entirely discernible as he was cloaked in shadow; he was so large that he blocked out the sunlight streaming into the colosseum. He was incredibly muscular, with broad shoulders and arms as thick as tree trunks; from what I could see, he was wearing some kind of angular bucket-helm that showed only his eyes; I can't remember their colour, only that he had a disdainful expression behind his helmet. His arms and torso were covered in banded iron, and he had a short cloak with vertical purple and white stripes cast over his left shoulder. Something about his jumbled and disorganised-looking set of armour told me it had been assembled from a scrap heap or something, but its thrown-together look made him no less intimidating. He may have spoken, but I don't quite remember. He turned, his cloak billowing, and walked away slowly with large footsteps, towards a waiting flying saucer that was parked a short way away within the colosseum. The ship was made of grey metal, with a domed glass top. Very stereotypical, really.

The colosseum briefly shimmered, and seemed to transition into one of the early maps from Half Life 2 where you are beset by Combine with machine gun turrets in a water-clogged junkyard, with the dream camera position at the right hand-side of the map, giving a sideways view. The helmeted figure continued walking towards his flying saucer, giving a look back, before ascending the ramp into it. It was at this point that I woke up.