NyxCC

Date: 25 July

Total sleep time: 7 hrs

Pre bed: 200 mg valerian, 100mg B6, 1 pep. oil capsule

Dream quality and recall: The dreams were very vivid, recall was good but only noted keywords. I found some dreams emotionally exhausting.

Challenges: I had trouble falling asleep, and later it was warm and noisy so I couldn't do the proper WBTB and take advantage of the vividness to get more and longer lds.

Alarm: I set a WBTB alarm as my natural wakes have become unreliable.

Fragment1: Aggressive DC B6 style (+3 hrs). A person I know behaves very aggressively, I become enraged.

Early micro-ld (+3 hrs after bed): I am in a city that looks similar to one I dreamt a few months ago. Before I recognize this place I am falling with some kind of flying platform thing? Then I go down the street, looking for the city center, I know it is in the opposite direction. On a very low level, I know that this is a dream, so I daringly look around, trying to get into the closed shops. I get distracted by the stuff they are selling - Swarovski smilies that I consider buying for my mom. I continue down the street, rather non-lucid and see they sell rolled scarves. The one that catches my attention is white/pink and as I pass by the street stall, I swiftly take it and pretend nothing happened. I hurry up, but nobody pays me any attention. Contrary to rl, where I have to look at a manual and the mirror, I easily put the scarf around my head and shoulders and continue down the street.

All the previous street stalls and sellers were from India, and this street also has some Indian style of atmosphere. It looks a bit trippy too, as I see a few DCs spitting like crazy.I am distractedly lucid and try to avoid this weird sight, as I walk down the street. Yet, the act of spitting catches my attention and I soon see strange spit-related stalagmites appearing all around me. For some reason, my will activates at this point and I say out loud "this is my dream and I have full control". I didn't expect myself to say this at all, so this puts me into super clarity of mind. Contemplating the statement, I focus on the space in front of me and see the little transparent dot (pin head size, that I sometimes notice during the day if I sleep less that 5 hrs). If find this very strange. At this point the dream falls apart and I am back in bed. A DEILD could have been successful, but decided to visit the restroom.

Fragment: in front of grandma's, I consider climbing a tree, but as my friend confirms there are webs all over the tree so better not.

Fragment: flying?

Dream: We are in Belgium and I go in this person's lab, where I mix some stuff. He is arrested as he is the owner, but they will soon be coming after us too. As I am preparing to leave, a woman that lives in his place comes in and tells me they (cops?) are coming. I have to go to the store and admit I am the one that bought something. The woman in the store will recognize me, so I change my appearance. Before I go, I want to listen to a song, but bf interrupts me.

Fragment: I enter a building, but as I go up the stairs, it turns into shelves stocked with food. As my mind is trying to figure out what the hell is this, I decide that this a small local supermarket, and look at the items there. Lots of expensive cheese and carrot juice. I have climbed on the shelf as am examining all the items. Soon my dad comes in and talks about the food.

Dream: I am in my hometown, in a small garden, waiting for something I can't remember now, on the ground, when Will Ferrell comes to me. He starts talking in German and there is a touch of aggression in the way addresses me and behaves. I tell him to switch to American, then wonder at my own statement. He makes a few comments in English, then goes to a street stall where they sell books and switches to German again. He forces me to buy 4 books, although I see no sense in reading them (they look very outdated and boring). As I take the four books to him, I remember that I don't have money for all of them, maybe just one.

Dream: We are going somewhere with parents, and I know we are heading towards the cave as I see boulders being held by protective nets. Before I know it (this felt lucid for a second because the dream skipped), we are already in the cave. I remember I have to crawl in, so I touch floor and walls of the narrow passage with my hands. We continue forward, but unlike what I have expected, there are no other people here and it is absolutely dark. The passage also gets narrower, I see no point in going further.

Micro ld: I can't remember how this started, I am looking at something (maybe in the cave?) and then it changes so in the darkness in front of me I see these huge ocean waves. I exert control over them, the way I do in many non-lds, but this time I know it was a dream. I am watching this from the distance, as if I am in the cave or in the void and the waves are like a vision/dreamlet in front of me. Then I concentrate on the sound of the waves, I hear them form and crash on the shore over and over, retaining some part of the vision of the waves. I become like enchanted, trying to recall how did the memory of the waves become so ingrained in my subconsciousness. The explanation I come up with is that this is a memory where I am lying on the beach asleep or relaxed, with the waves as the background sound. I feel I am lying on the stomach on the beach, with eyes closed, as if I am relieving a past memory. I am relaxing, semi-asleep, listening to the sound of the ocean.

Dream: Another person pisses me off and I tell him exactly the same things I was thinking about in the last couple of days (saying them is not advisable irl)

Dream: I am on the couch with the son of family friends. For a second, I touch his arm, but then think again. No. He tells me he is sorry that his mom is always inviting me to celebrations (like birthday parties, etc.) and that actually he doesn't want me to be there. I understand, I don't want either. I know that his mom has been trying to hook me up with him. (a rather accurate evaluation, his mom is very enthusiastic about us meeting irl)

Prebed: 1 1/2 glass of soy milk

Total sleep time: 8 hrs

Recall method: none, woke up briefly after each dream but was so sleepy, I didn't bother to write anything. Did not attempt WBTB either. Everything is so fragmented now, good thing I still remember although with much less detail the short DILD I had.

Dream1: We are back to high school and as usual we have to do an extra year. Everybody should be in class soon, I wonder again how are we going to do that. I am waiting for a friend of mine to show up as usual, I don't think he did.

Fragment2: One of my classmates, her features are a bit strange and now she also has a sister that looks very similar to her. (She actually has a brother)

Fragment3: On the beach, I am watching the waves. I think somebody, it kind of looked like a documentary and I was part of it, said that here the waves are just the right size to swim and maybe surf?

Dream4 mini-DILD: The background is grey and a number of DCs that look like zombies are walking towards me. I become lucid. I remember my recent resolution to freestyle during the next lucids and see what I can make out of the situation. I decide that I will use this one to train my reactions. Ok, so they are walking towards me, I don't care at all. I am just consciousness, no material substance, they can't hurt me. They are still advancing, and one comes so close that it actually touches my hand. I feel and see my hand and this destroys my concept of non-materiality. I brace myself for the impact. The dream slowly fades and I wake up.

Note to self: Maybe I should spend less time thinking and more time acting in LDs?

Fragment5: I go to the kitchen to look for the bottle of water I bought for myself irl and find that one of our guests has opened it and now holds it in her hand. It is too late to say anything, I just wish this hasn't happened.

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April Review

Number of ld nights: 9 (3 with double lds)

Number of lds: 12 (2 WILD, 2 DEILD, 8 DILD)

Quality: Good, with few exceptions, a few fade away issues and changing the scene is still a challenge

Recall: I am getting used to having a roller-coaster type of recall. I am not sure if I should place additional demands on that at the moment.

Things to work on:

- I think I might go for some flexibility on task completion and work more on stability. (But who knows in what kind of mood I will be?)

- I also want to go back to a more decent WBTB schedule after meeting all kinds of relatives and friends is over.

- There are other issues (like changing the scene) to work on but will see how it all goes and deal with them accordingly.

I got more than I expected in April, so I won't be expecting more than I can get in May. Just keep dreaming...

Before sleep: noticing sleep sensations

Total sleep time: 7hrs

Dream recall method: dr1- wrote down a few sentences and went over dream 2 times in mind before falling asleep; fragments – no method, had to wake up

HH1: unconsciously talk thinking to myself about some DV post

HH2: was dream thinking how hard it is for a woman to go out with a man in some restrictive countries

Dream1: I was at grandma2, and backpack was on the floor wide open. I noticed how many strange objects were there. We were about to go to the mountains and I was happy about that. I was thinking what to bring to read there, some magazine perhaps.

Now we are in the outskirts of the mountain, near a bus stop. I have most likely forgotten to go up the mountain and am heading back home instead. There are people on the bus stop and without any notice a dog bites my back. I do not feel any pain but I am tightly grabbed by its jaws, it doesn’t let go. I start thinking out loud why it attacked me, I wasn’t mentally provoking it in any way. I try to negotiate my way out of its grab, by talking to the dog. It eventually releases me.

I am at the lower part of the mountain where there are houses around. I head down a slope, but as I look at it, I see the shore. This turns into a very beautiful scene, where I am looking at a wonderful array of sea cliffs, the waves slowly clashing against the cliffs. I look at the sky and it is clear blue, the sun is shining on the cliffs and they look fantastic. I feel the urge to go as close to the water as possible. The waves, though, wet some cliffs so I decide not to go that far because it is slippery there. There are lots of people watching the sea and cliffs, some take pictures. Just behind me is the city hall and the female mayor, short dark red-brown hair comes to tell us that pictures are forbidden. An unpleasant DC man continues taking pics even photographs me. Soon two guards come and take everybody to a bus to drive them home or just drop them off somewhere. I want to go back to the beautiful place, so when the bus doors open I escape and go back. At this point the sun is already setting and the cliffs are darker. There are no people around so I still tour around looking at the shore. The guard comes back to pick me up again. We are walking somewhere but he has a sudden surge to visit the restroom, so I say that I will be waiting outside.



Fragment2: I am with my bf in a café maybe. But then I decide to go somewhere else, on my way I decide to go back. I get really confused in this unknown to me city center. The dream was quite vivid and I had a hard time orienting and even crossing the street where there were cars but no traffic lights. I cannot find the place I was initially in, so I try calling my bf. I end up in some nice looking hotel, preparing to have lunch there. I am not a guest of the hotel, but can use its facilities including having lunch there.

Fragment3: Another confusing walk. Initially I found the restroom but go out and try to go back. I am in this building complex and go round in circles, always ending up in something like a café, but I can’t find the restroom, I begin to feel completely lost in this maze.

Fragment4: Some kind of embroidered patches with animated characters. What was peculiar about this embroidery was that it kept on moving even after you sew it on clothes.

Fragment5: This was supposed to be a friend of mine, but it was a completely another person, with short hair and bright red thin lips. She has some kind of red medallion, which looked like a soft cotton Christmas toy.

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End-of-the-month review

Days since registered at DV: 19

March LD before DV reg: 1 DILD

March LDs after DV reg: 1 semi-lucid; 2 DILDs (both snooze type), pretty long and stable

Dream recall: fluctuating between very detailed dreams to remembering fragments and noting key words.

DJ: I am content that I have kept a pretty consistent DJ in the last few weeks


Things to continue working on:

- RC: start the day with RC; RC every time I meet a person!

- DS: add toilet to DS

- Sleep sensations: to increase general awareness and prepare for WILD

- WILD: I have to organize myself and make serious attempts at least twice a week?

- Sleep schedule: go to bed on time


Challenges:

- Disruptions: Unfortunately 2 guests will come in mid April in our apartment for 3 weeks full time, so I guess at that time my dream quests will be harder to follow.

- Negativity: sometimes I would wake up and think “No LD again", feeling disappointed. This has got to stop. Think instead, “The next LD is just around the corner” “I enjoy what I am doing and am happy with any dreams I can recall”.

- Laziness: just keep on writing DJ entries and doing RCs!!!