vignettes from a different world

decided to start keeping a dream journal again because my recall has been abysmal the past few months.

i do not recall much of the first dream. i remember that the scene was dark and there were several men around. at one point (i do not know if i was awake or still dreaming) i thought to myself that i should try to remember this dream.

later in the night i believe i had a false awakening. i dreamt that i was laying in my bed, and i decided to go back to sleep. my dream began on the bottom floor of a house. i was sort of aware that i was dreaming, and i decided to go up the stairs because it would turn this house into a cool house from one of my favourite dreams (which i had before i started keeping a journal on DV). the house was large and airy with many floors; the top floor was a white gazebo several hundred feet above the ground. i was sitting on a chair in the gazebo and gazing out at the sky. i was still faintly aware that i was dreaming. i tried to give myself a feeling of happiness/euphoria but it did not really work. i became aware of my real-life body and my dream imagery began to fade.

after that i slept fitfully. i would wake up once every half hour or so and return to sleep almost immediately. i had a dream about being at some kind of camp. there was a lot to this dream but i do not recall much. the part i remember took place in a large outdoor pool. it was sunny and warm outside. i asked a man what the temperature was and he said '42 degrees'. i decided to go for a swim but by the time i reached the pool it had been drained. it was full of wet leaves and detritus.

edit: remembered another part of the camp/pool dream. i was with some teenage girls who had some pills that they said were MDMA. most of the pills were pink tablets with imprints but two of them were large black "bars" with white text and hearts on them. i told them i had to analyze the pills before i took them. i recall that i found out the 'bars' were some kind of herbal supplement.

haven't updated my dj for a while.. got lazy. have to get back into the habit. this was a very long dream and my descriptions don't really do justice to the feelings of absolute terror it inspired at points.


i dreamt that i lived in a big house with some other teenagers. occasionally my boyfriend came over. we played video games and cuddled and it was very good. i remember feeling anxious about how to arrange our next meeting.
then i was walking around downtown. it was sunny out. some store had gone out of business and they were giving away their furniture. i found a large bed, whose bottom panel comprised several dressers. i opened each of the dressers and i discovered very elaborate blankets and dresses, as well as some scraps of paper.
there was writing on the paper. although it was in "polish", i was able to understand it. (i don't know any polish). the words frightened me. i cannot remember what they said but the content was very paranoid, surreal and fragmented. it chilled me to the bone.
i went in search of the woman to whom the bed & these papers belonged. (she was an old decrepit polish woman with long grey-brown hair.) i was wandering through downtown at night. i remember also seeing medieval-style maps of eastern europe that the woman had made. an atmosphere of visceral horror pervades this dream segment.
i finally found the woman. at first i was terrified of her and i tried to hide from her as one might try to evade a bear. later i took pity on her and invited her to a formal dinner with some of the people from the dream house. she wouldn't eat at first but i got her to eat a small amount.
then i got into a car with a man in his late 20s and we drove around downtown, which was now sunny. there were two mario figurines in... uh... the little things on the inside of car doors where you can store tiny stuff. one of the figurines toppled over and turned into a waluigi figurine with oddly coloured, very dark (but not black) clothes. when this happened to the second figurine i knew the polish woman was dead. i felt relieved.
we knew that some scrawny ginger guy was responsible for her death and we took a different route home to avoid him. when i was home my boyfriend was there and we decided to go to a café called "the simoleon". this café was buffet-style: they had many sweets on offer and you could load up your plate with as many as you wanted. i ate a weird pudding thing and it tasted good.
next my boyfriend and i went to the mall. he wanted to buy a watch. there were two stores that sold watches, an absurdly expensive designer store and american eagle. the watches were bands of engraved black leather with detachable clock pendants that hung down from the leather band. my boyfriend went into american eagle while i tried to steal one of the expensive watches. i could not steal them because they were attached to the display rack with strong magnets.
i joined my boyfriend in american eagle but when i tried to leave the alarm went off. i hadn't actually stolen anything so i was confused. some people took me into the back of the mall to interview me. they thought i had tampered with mail? one of the people commented to the other that they had heard me talking about incest and even if i hadn't done anything they should arrest me for that.
at one point i became half-lucid and sort of willed the dream to become less stressful. i walked away from the interview and entered the "back" of the mall, which was where all the extra items were stored. i went into the luxury store and looked around. i also recall going into a store called "HERON CLOTHES" which sold low-quality clothes with small embroidered emblems of forest animals (no herons though). the dream ended shortly after.

i was directing a music video with my mind. i do not remember what the music actually sounded like but i recall thinking it was like the doors. the vocals and lyrics were very prominent. the music was vivid and complex as it always is in my dreams. the lyrics were about some kind of drug hallucination or delirium.

the music video was set in a darkened suburban area, on someone's lawn. the colour scheme was mainly dark blue and black. the lead singer was dancing around erratically while i caused strange imagery to manifest. there were many of these strange images but i only recall a few. at one point there were cloth-like, lumpy growths swirling around the branches of a tree, disappearing and reappearing. later, there were unfamiliar people standing in rows and i caused their faces to distort. after doing this for a while the dream scene unexpectedly went black and an image of a humanoid figure with a bright red, glowing circle for a head and an ill-defined glowing yellow body appeared. i felt a jolt of intense fear unlike anything i have experienced in waking life. i screamed loudly in the dream but my screams sounded muted and distorted. i wondered if i was screaming in real life. soon afterwards i woke up. (i wasn't).

lovely, lovely dreams tonight. nothing particularly unpleasant has been going on in waking life as of late, but these dreams showed up anyhow. slept from about 9 to about 6.

i have spoilered the more graphic parts of the molestation dream for those of you who might be disturbed by it.

in the first dream i am driving around my city at twilight. i remember the exact area where i was -- near the intersection of R-----d & R----n.

Spoiler for click to read:

suddenly i feel invisible hands touching me. it is as if i am sitting on someone's lap but there is nobody there. i am greatly disconcerted. suddenly i am in the passenger seat and a teenaged asian boy is driving, while still touching me occasionally. he pulls into my school's parking lot (it is night now). there are 3 other boys waiting for us as well as an old man. i am nervous. the asian boy introduces me to the old man and tells me that he was the one who was touching me. a girl adds that he is 63 years old and a banker, and gives me his full name. she urges me to tell the police.

later i am in a room with blue walls. there are my little pony posters and merchandise everywhere. i am talking to a woman in her 30s about my experience. i want to tell her the man's name, but i cannot remember it. i get frustrated at this and also about the fact that i am discussing my sexual abuse in a my little pony fanclub.

in the second dream i am in an unfamiliar house. i am sitting on the couch and i am shocked to discover that my ex is sitting right beside me. for a moment i consider that this could be a dream, but the vivid and detailed imagery convinces me otherwise. i get extremely angry. i start yelling at him, asking "how did you get here?" "why are you here?" i don't get a straight answer. i begin punching and slapping him. he barely fights back.
i go do something else for a while and i come back to find my ex sitting on a bed crying. i thought he had left and now i get even angrier. i scream at him and throw heavy objects at him. i tell him that i'm going to bed, and if he isn't gone by the time i wake up "something bad will happen".
i go into my bedroom for a while and then come back. my ex is still there, playing a SNES game on a blue tv. again, i physically attack him and threaten that bad things will happen. i'm furious. the tv says "error, zero zero, error" and then i wake up.

very interesting dream phenomena tonight. slept from about 12 pm to 9:30 am and had normal dreams, was awake for about half an hour, and fell back asleep from 10 - 11 am which is when the interesting stuff started...

midnight - 9:30 am

i was looking at clothes in a large department store. i wanted to buy a dress. the dresses i wanted (one black dress and one light blue dress with dark turquoise polka dots) were in the children's section, but i figured i could fit into them anyway since i'm petite.

the next dream began in my grade 9 drama classroom. i was talking to an attractive girl with long black hair and pale skin. i believe her name was nadia and i understood that she was russian. i felt intense feelings of love and tenderness for her. there was a bed in the classroom, and we wanted to sleep together, but we were afraid other people would see and judge us. at some point the classroom morphed into a bedroom. i remember nothing else.

10-11 am

hypnagogia

after a short period of wakefulness i lay back down in bed and shifted into a half-aware state. i was still environmentally oriented - i opened my eyes a few times to see my bedroom as it normally is - but i was experiencing the involuntary associative thought that accompanies the hypnagogic state. generally i enter directly into sleep shortly after experiencing this "hypnagogic thought" but in this case it was not so. i began to have what i now realize were auditory hallucinations. at first i believed i was listening to a podcast on my laptop, which i often do before falling asleep. the audio was very distinct and i could identify the different people's voices although i was not able to make out the content of their speech (it was a little quiet.) then music began to play: specifically, the songs neutral milk hotel - oh comely and the gerbils - glue. i remember being puzzled about how these songs were playing without me interacting w/ the laptop but i believed they were not hallucinations because the audio was so clear and the songs were so perfectly reproduced -- and after all, i was not dreaming!

i am able to tell that this was a hypnagogic state and not a dream of being in bed because at one point my roommate knocked on my door to tell me that she was leaving for school -- this occured at the appropriate time (around quarter after ten) & i responded appropriately. during the time that the hallucinatory music was playing i decided i should try to get to sleep and so i used some basic relaxation techniques (relaxing the body from the toes to the head).

dreams

the relaxation technique fades into a dream wherein i am sliding down the stairs to the basement of the old townhouse. i repeat this a few times. i am aware that this is a dream and i believe that sliding down the stairs will metaphorically allow me to 'slide' deeper into the dream state as well as 'lower' me into a state of sexual disinhibition. it seems to do both.

i enter into a dream where... well, in the interests of full disclosure, i am an underage (~12-13 y/o) girl partaking in various sex acts with a nondescript college-age boy. the perspective is quite interesting here: i am watching the dream unfold in third person, but i am experiencing the sensations that my dream-self would experience in the depicted situation. i am able to control the dream by willing certain situations to happen.

my dream-self has red hair with bangs and pigtails and green eyes. her outfit changes many times over the course of the dream. the male character has short black hair and glasses; he is tall and thin. the dream varies between realism and an anime-esque style (i very rarely dream in a non-realistic style; i can probably count the number of such dreams i've had on one hand.)

this dream is divided into multiple different scenes. each scene begins with me meeting the boy in his college classroom (large and crowded, with metal walls; he sat near the door) at the end of class. we have to be discreet, as i am underage. after we leave the classroom, the sexual activities ensue. a full description of everything that transpired in this dream would be frankly pornographic, and i have no need to write it all down here as i'll be able to remember it without epistolary assistance. what's important about these scenes is that the sexual sensations i experienced in the dream are far, far more intense than anything i have ever experienced in waking life. i attribute this to a release phenomenon engendered by the downregulation of activity in certain brain structures during REM sleep which causes disinhibition and consequent overexcitation in various other areas; there could also be a psychological component to it. nonetheless it never fails to amaze me when i experience it.

after many "scenes" the sexual dream ends, along with the lucidity. i find myself in a washroom stall, and there is a copy of a manga that contains illustrations of the previous dream on the floor. i am afraid that other people using the washroom will see it on the floor and think i am perverted. i try to find somewhere to hide it but i cannot. later i am wandering through a dark maze of strangely-proportioned washroom stalls, trying to find a normal one: i understand that they are all weirdly shaped because i am in germany.

at some point i find myself atop a large warp pipe from the mario series. i am in the middle of a great sea and i can see a small island close to me. the colours here are somewhat muted/desaturated but still quite pleasing to the eye. i go to the island, which is very small and covered in yellow-brown dead grass; there is a quaint stone hut with a thatched roof here, where there lives a young woman with long blonde hair and a weathered but beautiful face. she wears a simple cotton gown. i gather blackberries and other fruits with her in front of the hut; i understand from the local flora that i am in scandinavia. i also understand that i am inside of the video game animal crossing.

my perspective later becomes detached -- moreso playing a video game than being inside of it. it gets dark and the sea becomes stormy. i understand that the woman is the "lifeguard" of the sea and i decide to drown her as an ironic joke. i pick her up through the game's interface and drop her in the sea, but she will not drown. i do not remember anything else.

----

a lot to analyze here, but i'm far too lazy. it was a pleasant experience nonetheless.

terrible recall tonight

1. i am working on a group project with unfamiliar people. we are in the auditorium of my elementary school. we are on laptops and we are running a program with a neon green and red on black colour scheme. there is some anxiety associated with this dream.

2. i am waiting for the bus in the snow with an unfamiliar girl. the atmosphere is very bleak.

3. i cannot remember anything about this dream except that i became lucid at one point! i simply realized that the circumstances of the situation were unrealistic and deduced that it was a dream. sadly my lucidity faded very quickly -- before i could do anything of interest.

4. false awakening. i am in bed in my room: very tired and disoriented. windows 7 error messages pop up and disappear constantly, obstructing my vision. i wonder if i am dreaming but decide that i am not. i am afraid that i am going insane.

i am with my boyfriend and some other people in a deserted warehouse. the room is vast and light is streaming through windows far above us.
there are various items scattered around and we are browsing for things of interest. i find a strange object with rounded corners, shaped like a laptop, with a dim LED screen: i understand that this is a PDA from the late 90s. i find this interesting but my discovery is quickly overshadowed when my boyfriend finds an intact vintage arcade cabinet. he calls this a commodore 64 although it clearly is nothing of the sort.

the setting switches to a dark room. we are all seated around a table. the arcade cabinet has changed to a small laptop and i am still holding my laptop/pda thing. my boyfriend starts playing on the "commodore 64" and as usual my viewpoint switches so that i am in the game, observing. he is playing some kind of shitty mario romhack. the background is all black, the characters are neon and they appear to be wearing strange masks. then i begin playing a game on my laptop.
in this game i am an angel flying above an amusement park (very bright, green grass -- looks a lot like rollercoaster tycoon). there are brown platforms in the air. at first i can't figure out how to control my character properly: but then four white rings appear around my character signifying the vectors in which i can move, and i am then able to control it.

there is another dream that involved a country backyard and dogs? i do not remember anything else. i recall that at one point i approached lucidity, but i did not fully realize that i was dreaming.