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    1. Sharing meals, making wine, washing a nightmare

      by , 02-11-2015 at 10:25 PM
      Somewhere in South Asia some centuries ago where I'm visibly a foreigner, I'm leaving the docks after making some arrangements for my departure. Thinking about how to dispose of the belongings that I don't want to bring with me, I've just offered to give some rare type of food to the man who's walking with me, a human who works for me. He's shocked - he completely refuses. It's important that he and I don't share meals, and apparently this is close enough to count. I apologize, but point out to him that we've shared more than that. He asks me not to talk about this in public.

      Talking about differing customs as we walk, we get onto the subject of my own homeland. I describe it as very far to the north, very isolated from the rest of the world, not a place he's likely to have heard of. I'm being deliberately evasive, obscuring how long ago it was that I left, among other things. I have a mental image of a place that's always covered in snow, and a need to retreat.

      Thinking of my people causes me to mentally tune in to two of them who are relatively nearby, a man and a woman who I think of as something like a brother and sister to me. Her, I keep in close contact with through letters on a regular basis. Mentally brushing against her now feels sort of like a friendly wave from a distance. Him, on the other hand - last I heard from him, he'd been doing his best to ignore my existence entirely. By accidentally tuning in to him now, I'm surprised to find he was already aware of my presence in this region and has secretly been keeping tabs on me. I'm amused, particularly since he's now pretending not to notice this mental contact.

      I get lost in thought for a bit about connections and different eras, and the scene changes. I'm in Europe, speaking Spanish with a woman in the 1700s or so - I think of her as being in a sort of religious seclusion, though my speaking with her now isn't a problem. She's telling me how much she enjoyed the piece Dieter published recently about winemaking techniques, and I tell her I'll pass that along. The observer side of me considers whether or not this short scene is something to bother recording for when I wake up.

      In my IRL home, a demon's joined me in the shower. She's in the form of a beautiful naked woman and she's talking to me like we're old friends, but the scene has the feel of a nightmare. She's talking about working together in a way that I'd probably be interested in discussing under other circumstances. But with that nightmare feel, I'm only thinking about avoiding being controlled by others.

      I give her the fuck-off-out-of-my-dream variety of exorcism. This doesn't work; if anything, the feel of a nightmare intensifies with the sense of a contest of wills. She's still trying to convince me to come work with her.

      Second try: I take a look at the demon's name. It begins and ends with A, so I cover up the middle portion, rewrite it as Athena, and chant an invocation, intending to remove the nightmare by transforming the demon into a goddess. Her features shift, but then shift back. We go back and forth a little bit, but eventually I give up on this method too. She's stopped trying to convince me to come work with her and is now just enjoying this contest for its own sake.

      Being as we're in the shower, I take a look at the soap and think of cleansing/purification methods of exorcism. Worth a shot. I start washing her, starting at the top and working my way down. She's intrigued - she clearly doesn't consider this a threat, and the contact is pleasant and similar enough to sexual that she considers this a form of me giving in to her. I'm curious myself whether this scene will end up following her sexual expectations or my cleansing intention. When I kneel down before her, I kiss her just below her navel, and she makes it clear how she expects this to play out from there; but I just move on to washing her legs. When I've finished her second foot, kissing the top of it before putting it down, the sense of nightmare is completely gone. I'm able to cause the scene to transition, continuing with a series of IRL-based scenes.
    2. Not a hallucination

      by , 01-03-2015 at 09:26 PM
      Recent dreams included an appearance from Inanna and Dumuzi.

      Today's:

      Avoiding direct sunlight, I made my way into a bar where I'm surprised to find a certain man - I'll refer to him as my friend. That's a lie, but it entertains me and disturbs him when I adopt a friendly attitude. I sit down and address him by name, and say, "I thought you were going back to Australia."

      "This is Australia," he says.

      That explains a lot. My aim is terrible, but at least I've got him to serve as a guide now. But to my surprise, he's not at all impressed by seeing me here. I'd really expected more of a reaction. We talk at cross purposes for a while, until he says that he'd thought I'd disappeared with yadda yadda event - I realize he believes he's talking with the hallucinatory version of me who'd been with him for a while. I'm surprised that lasted so long, it wasn't intended to. I explain to my friend that I'm not his hallucination, I'm the real thing. He doesn't seem to believe me.

      I sit down at the bar and wait for him to come around, and watch the sun go down through the window. A woman comes over and sits down next to me - on the bar itself, not a stool. We explain pleasantries, and she says a few things that don't make much sense to me until I recognize this as the opening moves of a mating ritual. I start to tell her that I appreciate the intention but our species aren't compatible in that way - and now my friend's hurrying me out the door. Oh good, it seems he's accepted that other people can see me.

      In the parking lot outside the bar, I stop and stare at the stars. I'm absolutely in awe of them. I call my friend by name, and ask him, "What am I looking at?" Seeing them in this unfamiliar arrangement is astonishing. He doesn't seem impressed by them, and I can't figure out why - this arrangement must be the one he grew up with, the one he spent so much time trying to get back to, so he should appreciate it. Seeing them through an atmosphere creates such an amazing effect. There are a few wisps of cloud adding to the view - and for a moment a patch of stars appears to be moving, but then I realize there's a children's toy floating above our heads in the shape of a translucent butterfly, distorting the view. I look down at the kids - they're looking at the toy, not the stars. My friend is trying to hurry me along through the parking lot, and I try to impress upon him how moving this is. "Do you know how long it's been since I've been down to earth? Any earth?" He remembers, he was there, and he is not interested in reminiscing.

      Short note from an earlier dream today: reading a description of "laurel leaves, called apollon," in which the author acknowledges that they cause strife but states that it's merely like the rebelliousness of an adolescent, and that they are indisputably sacred to Apollo.

      Updated 01-03-2015 at 10:03 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    3. The Goblin King, Orpheus, and tracking down roses in China

      by , 12-09-2014 at 08:11 PM
      Speaking with Jareth, I end a sentence with "god!" A general exclamation, but that's not how he takes it. He replies, entirely serious, "Don't call me that." I didn't, but good to know your arrogance has some limits.

      I'm singing the title role of Don Giovanni, wearing a mask that covers my entire face, even my mouth. Reminds me of the McKittrick. While on stage, I switch places with someone else, identically dressed.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm swimming in a pool with a woman who's offered to grant me a wish. To do so, she tells me I must go to Thailand and walk into the jungle in a certain place until I reach an abandoned building. Here, I must draw one of two specific symbols in the dirt. It doesn't matter which one I choose, what matters is the reasoning behind my choice. Whichever I choose, she'll draw the other. She'll stand at my back, using those two symbols in some way, during which time I must not turn to look at her or communicate with her in any way. Success depends on her understanding why I made the choice I did.

      A young man runs out of a house, pursued by several women wearing black and red. Shortly afterward, inside that building, I come across three young men, and I ask, "Which one of you sprinted out of here looking like Orpheus with the Bacchae on his heels?"

      I'm looking over some photos of the new cast at the McKittrick. (Side note - last time I dreamed of Orpheus, he was in the McKittrick-as-underworld.) A new storyline has been added in. The photo I'm looking at now shows the woman at the center of that new storyline, sitting on a stool at a diner counter - sad expression, short wavy blonde wig, purple dress, purple purse on the counter. The character's female but always played by a male actor. In the background behind her, there's a man in a suit slouched in one of the booths, watching her. He's a sort of sycophant character, sleazy, untrustworthy, but entirely loyal to her in his own way.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Edwardian England, there's a heavyset, motherly woman gently pushing a sick young woman back down into her bed, over the young woman's protests - she's feeling much better but she's having a hard time thinking straight enough to make herself understood. At this point she's just saying, "No, no." The light from the window is hurting her head, it's much too bright. I'm sympathetic about that, but mostly I'm relieved to be able to see her like this at all, relieved that she's all right and that the connection that lets us see what the other's doing is now working. I haven't seen her in some time.

      I see images representing all the other people I have those connections with, with an image representing this woman now added to the end of the line. There are maybe two dozen images here, older connections as I look back farther. The most recent image, aside from that Edwardian scene, represents someone I just saw recently in person, pleasant feelings. As I look farther back, there's one image that instantly brings up feelings of irritation - we don't keep in touch, we've never been able to understand each other, and just this brief visual reminder of her brings up that old frustration. There's a few places where an image should be there but isn't - the woman whose death I dreamed of recently, the roses that turned to ash. And at the other end of the line, the very first two: the first, a woman with a long red braid, a sword in her hand, standing in a snow-covered forest. The second, a more symbolic image - a variety of colorful butterflies hanging in the air against a dark background, two trees just barely visible in the darkness. And a little bit apart from the last of those images, a simple black image to represent me.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm lying on my back in a field hospital in 20th century China. There's a young woman treating me, wearing a uniform, with her hair tied up in two braids. I've been enjoying speaking with her. I haven't been enjoying whatever's in that IV. I'm thinking about the woman mentioned in that previous scene, with the roses turning to ash.

      Still in China, I'm in a small boat that a middle-aged man is steering by pole. I've hired him to take me and an old woman back to her hometown, though it's been flooded and abandoned for a very long time. The old woman doesn't live in the present anymore. Her hometown is the place where I last saw that woman with the roses, though that was a long time ago and I don't know if I'll be able to find anything useful there. I haven't been back to this part of the world since before this area was flooded. I focus on the ruins of a building I recognize, as the boat passes underneath.
    4. Unrecognized in their hometown, 7 color prison, abandoned bath house, old Victorian

      by , 10-13-2014 at 08:11 PM
      This kid of no particular gender has just gotten a lift to a particular town, saying "Here's fine," to the person who gave them a ride. They walk into a diner. As they walk up to the counter I'm thinking how feminine they look, in contrast to some previous appearance. They know the waitress, and they greet her in a familiar way; the waitress looks them over but doesn't recognize them and asks if she should know them. They say no. They're happy that she didn't recognize them even after they sort of clued her in that she should.

      As they leave the diner, they pass their father coming in. Their father doesn't recognize them either. He mistakes them for being part of some group of out-of-towners who are currently passing through, people he resents, and he complains about that to the waitress when he gets to the counter. The waitress asks if he knew that person leaving, he says no. The waitress says it looks like they knew him - they're still standing outside, looking through the window, staring at the back of his head right now.

      Outside, the kid walks past a car. The two guys in the car say something to each other about how that person's too pretty for their own safety, and needs someone to ugly them up a bit - a threat.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a man I'm meant to capture - I'm holding a small box which I'm meant to store him in. He's trying to convince me to turn against the people I'm working for, the Head Office. He mentions that they put him in a 7-color-prison - a shield of a particular 'color' prevents the power used by that 'color' from passing through; a 7-color-prison would normally be considered overkill. He mentions this as part of describing to me the cruel way he was treated by the Head Office, trying to convince me that they have to be stopped. But it has the opposite effect; I believe that if he was judged so dangerous as to require a 7-color-prison, I can't trust his words. I put him in the box. His sister was watching this whole thing, but although she's upset there's nothing she can do to stop me - she's an innocent, she's got no power of her own. I hand over the box to a guy from the Head Office who's waiting outside - he's new, young, and looks afraid of the box even as he takes it.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I've walked into a bath house. This place belongs to a group that I think of with a word that at the time I believed meant the young men of the city protected by Apollo (but the word I actually used was 'lemures,' the restless dead). It's empty and unused, and there are exposed pipes that are turning black. As I look around, I think that this explains the abandoned building next door.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's this kid, high school age, who set out to change himself, improve himself somehow, and I - as a disembodied voice - am asking him what his goal had been when he'd started. He'd wanted to be able to take care of his aging father. He's lost track of that along the way.

      The scene changes from a hill outdoors to a classroom - he's popular, admired. This is a recent development, one of the things he's changed about himself. But he doesn't seem happy with the people around him - he seems arrogant, he looks down on them. And he forgets to spend time with his father. I see him with his father at a small table - they joke around with each other and talk the way people who are close sometimes do, with so many in-jokes and understood references to past events that it's effectively their own language. His father doesn't mind that he's so busy. But the kid recognizes that he's lost track of his original goal, and he has to correct his course. He goes to the house that he's been using to change himself, a place that grants wishes of a sort.

      Inside the house, which is a Victorian, old and mostly empty except for portraits on the walls, he's greeted by three men. The one who talks to him is short, maybe 5 feet at the most, plain, and with curly red hair. The men ask him to stay and eat and drink himself into a coma with them again. He refuses. They say it's better than the alternative, but let him go on up the stairs. Every time he's come here to change himself, he's had to go a little deeper into this house. The first time, eating and drinking with them was enough.

      Upstairs, a creature with a helmet that hides its face and with long metal hooks for hands emerges from the wall. The kid's met this creature before too, and knows how to deal with it. There's a sequence where I see various creatures and people emerge from the wall one by one, and it's implied that the kid deals with each of them in turn, but there's no need to actually watch the process play out since this has all happened before, and how to deal with each one of them is already known. The last one to emerge from the wall is a dashing man, blonde, cheerful, sort of an Errol Flynn-type character, as if he's just stepped out of a swashbuckling flick. They've met before, and they talk for a bit. This man will go up the next set of stairs on the kid's behalf, and arrange for him to get his wish. Other people have done this for the kid before, a different person every time he's visited this place.

      My point of view switches to follow the Errol Flynn-type at this point while the kid stays downstairs. In the room at the top of the stairs is a portrait of a little girl - the kid's met her before. The two of them talk, and she emerges from the portrait. Long straight dark hair, a long white dress, and pink satin slippers with rosebuds. She quickly drops the personality that the kid would have been familiar with, and the Errol Flynn-type winds up on the floor in front of her, kissing her feet - fear, not devotion. She states that she collects "shades of the Ampha Berra family" - she opens a panel in her dress, displaying many different shades of bloodstains on the fabric underneath. The Errol Flynn-type won't survive, and she'll change the kid as he asked.
    5. Advice in a sanatorium

      by , 09-19-2014 at 06:48 PM
      I've spent the past few scenes in this huge house, and I'm currently walking through a door that I expect to take me back to a place I'd been in earlier in the dream - there's a character I'd intended to meet up with again. Instead, I find myself in a room I think of as resembling a sanatorium - there are long rows of beds on each side of the room, with a few curtains here and there for privacy. On each bed there's a woman in a hospital gown, writhing like she's in a bad demon possession horror flick.

      I go lucid and try to remember if there are any lucid tasks I'd wanted to perform of the ask-a-DC variety - no, there aren't any. But I believe dialogue is the only lucid trick I can do right now. So I ask something of the various women and get short, boring answers - I don't remember what I asked or what those boring answers were. The last one I asked gave me a longer answer involving a reference to an earthworm - I noted her response as nonsensical but phrased poetically, which I thought of as a step up from the straightforward and boring responses from the others. I'm now mentally comparing them less to demon possession horror flicks and more to Greek spirits - Furies or such.

      Towards the end of the row of hospital beds, there's a woman who's much older than the others. She objects to me - calls my behavior intrusive. She takes my hand in hers, saying this will help her see me - representing that this should be a two-way conversation, rather than just me one-sidedly questioning them. Closing her eyes for a moment, she asks what's blocking me. My first instinct is that she's referring to meditation, mysticism, that sort of thing. But since she didn't say so specifically, I go with a safe response: I talk about general life concerns. She cuts me off and clarifies that she was indeed asking about meditation and mysticism and such. I, sounding annoyed, say I was getting to that - which is a lie.

      But we continued talking about general life concerns anyway - specifically career things. Everything we said on the subject sounded sensible (even after I woke up), and she pointed out a good solution that I disliked - I thought it sounded like more effort than it was worth. She quite reasonably laughed at me for that - for wanting a perfect solution to just come along without any effort.
    6. Yeo Wool and Kang Chi, repeatedly

      by , 07-11-2014 at 06:55 PM
      As Kang Chi in modern times, I meet Yeo Wool. She remembers me. We're both shocked. I have a false awakening in which I try to tell IRL friend S. about that dream, and then go on to a few IRL-based scenes - trying to find a place to park in NYC, and trying to form words out of a jumble of letters.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      In the past. Kang Chi and Yeo Wool are meeting up in this hut in the mountains outside of town. They have to separate, and they're being very loudly upset about it. It's just before dawn, and as a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking they must be waking people up in town, they're so loud.

      Kang Chi's lying on his back in that town at night, looking up at the full moon. It looks massive, taking up most of my field of vision. He's meant to be meeting Yeo Wool soon and traveling somewhere together, but he's convinced himself she won't come anyway - there's something that's happened between them or something she's involved in that's on his mind, but he's not thinking about it directly. He's talking to himself out loud, convincing himself that she won't come and he should just leave on his own.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Kang Chi's delirious, standing outside somewhere on the edge of that same town and calling for someone he calls brother - not a literal brother. Yeo Wool's trying to get him to move, but as he starts talking like this, she remembers a time in the past when they were in trouble in this same place and Wol Ryung had helped them. He and Kang Chi had called each other brother sometimes - it's partially a reference to being the same species, and partially acknowledging each other as close while sidestepping the complicated family issue. So she realizes that, delirious, Kang Chi's calling Wol Ryung for help. Wol Ryung's dead.

      Kang Chi and Yeo Wool are traveling together in a very distant place. Yeo Wool's wearing modern clothes - no one else is. They're surrounded by soldiers carrying spears and a froglike nobleman on horseback - not a human being. The two of them raise daggers to their own throats, threatening to kill themselves rather than let the froglike man capture them alive.

      As Kang Chi, I'm outside and looking through a window at Yeo Wool. There's a luna moth on the window.

      And then two IRL-based scenes - catching and releasing an insect, and a visit from an IRL sister's friend.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      In modern times, Kang Chi's at a studio where they're filming a movie or a show, and a woman is talking to him, sounding very irritated. Without naming any names, she makes it clear there's been rumors going around about someone who works here being viewed as violent, potentially dangerous. Kang Chi's thinking this is about Yeo Wool - she's recently become nonhuman, and the adjustment period can be rough. Which makes this his responsibility. Without specifically naming names, Kang Chi tries to get the woman to confirm that it's Yeo Wool she's talking about. But Yeo Wool's just appeared at the end of the hall, and the woman says to ask her himself and stalks off.

      And then an IRL-based scene involving studying Agamemnon.
    7. A row of spears and three peaches

      by , 05-02-2014 at 08:30 PM
      Fragment involving Odin and Thor. And later a fragment involving Persephone, which referenced an older dream where the McKittrick had been a journey to the Underworld.

      I'm hanging from a tree, holding onto a branch with both hands, dangling above rows of spears planted in the ground. I believe I've been slipping in and out of a dreamworld, and I need to get back, there's something there I need to accomplish. I consider that this place might also be a dream - but whether it is or not, I still believe I need to get back to that other dreamworld.

      Below me, just beyond the rows of spears, there's a woman who reminds me in some fashion of a lizard. If she'll do me a favor that will help me get back to that dreamworld, I promise her a jar of three peaches. Someone else has promised her two peaches to do something different - that someone else is a good friend of mine, but we haven't been able to consult with each other recently, so we've accidentally wound up getting in each other's way. Now the lizard-woman's torn, deciding between the two offers, but I'm thinking it'll work out well for her whichever way she goes.
    8. The dog-headed man

      by , 03-20-2014 at 09:47 PM
      I'm looking at a man with the head of a dog, carrying something like a whip made out of live snakes, driving a chariot through a large underground hall. He's a good and trusted friend, and I've given him a highly respected position here, something to do with training or teaching. There was an assassination attempt a while ago, and ever since then he's refused to come above ground, except for twice a month, different days every month, and even then only at specific locations.

      A flashback to a time shortly after that assassination attempt, from 3rd person now. The dog-headed man was resting up in a garden in an area separate from the rest of the compound, for the intelligence workers only. There's a woman there, and he's wondering if she's the one who took care of him while he was delirious. He doesn't completely trust her. She's told him before that she was designed by her masters to be a partner for "Riker" - although the dog-headed man doesn't realize it, this is a codename referring to the leader of the compound (my pov character in the previous scene. When I hear the name Riker, I associate it with Dune's Paul). While talking about various things, she complains that "my Riker's" role won't come into play until later, so for now all she can do is wait.
    9. A dead girl and a dog

      by , 03-04-2014 at 12:02 AM
      My IRL sisters are visiting me and we've been bickering as we walk to the door of my IRL house. There's a dead girl standing in the driveway, staring at the door, and - sarcastically, it's related to what we were bickering about - I say to her something along the lines of "Well? Are you coming in, too?" This is said more for my sisters' benefit than for the dead girl; she doesn't seem to react.

      Inside, I get online and read a news article. The powerful old guard of some country have been giving themselves promotions. One man is referred to by the titles Ulmo (name taken from Tolkien, but at the time I believed it was a reference to some eastern European mythology) and Eleusis, and a rank which translates to Old Knight. The Ulmo of myth is (in this dream) associated with beginnings and the dawn, and that was symbolic for this man's political duties, but as these people have given themselves promotions those myth-derived titles have become more literal - he can now literally control dawn, and other forms of time related to the beginnings of things.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a caterpillar in my IRL house. I pick it up, and although it keeps wriggling away, I eventually manage to take it outside. When I put it down in the grass, it immediately tries to get back inside, and I realize there's a beetle out there it's trying to get away from. The beetle tells me that this is the spirit of a dead girl. It tells me a story about this girl and a hockey player who's also now dead, and about two guys who took a deal not to talk about something that happened between two hockey players and two girls. I see the hockey player and the dead girl on a train, and she's staring blankly into space with these wide, round eyes.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm watching an extended version of Near Dark with various extras. The one I'm watching seems to be an interview, but with the characters themselves, not the cast/crew. The family's standing around a Cadillac convertible, and Caleb's talking to someone about how he first joined the family, a long time ago. He'd been driving with a woman, she'd been drunk, when the family found them she hadn't realized the danger they were in. He talks about Mae, and then he holds up her hand and says "and lucky me - no ring." He laughs. Jesse looks a little disgusted by the way Caleb talks about Mae, but he laughs too. Caleb's wearing a belt buckle shaped like the head of a snake with fangs bared.

      I decide to go back to the main menu. This isn't just for Near Dark, but for a wide variety of movies, and one displays a picture of John Constantine with a title that references immortality and love and/or betrayal. The menu images are constantly shifting, and he slips off the screen. There are at least two layers of the image, and I think of those layers as somehow acting as mirrors, both of the viewer and of each other. By changing the angle I'm standing at, I get Constantine back in view.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Someone's telling a story. The listener asks, "Was it the wrath of heaven?" The storyteller shakes her head. "It was the wrath of the humans." Following someone's advice led to some captured human surviving and leaving the fortress where the storyteller lived, an isolated building in the center of a vast field stretching to the horizon, the only landmark I can see. He returned with many soldiers. As a disembodied observer standing on the top of that fortress, I can hear the soldiers shouting to each other. They're speaking Korean, I don't understand them.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A setting based on a fantasy version of ancient China. An elegantly dressed woman is telling a terrified human man to "call me elder sister." He frantically agrees, although he nearly calls her something more along the lines of 'mistress' as he does so; he's thinking about her connection to his master. She releases him and walks off, through a fence, passing through the solid object like it's not there. Looking at this, the man says or thinks "What a way for owls to fly around at night."

      A similar fantasy China setting. There's a man leading a human woman around a palace, talking about truth and the inability to lie. "Like this," the woman says, holding up the candle she was given by the woman who rules this place. It has words carved into it, which she believes promises her safe passage in some fashion. He laughs, and says that's a careful bit of phrasing, which causes her to look concerned. He reads it out, and it says something along the lines of "The human will want/feel no hunger." He points out that this statement will be true even if she stays here forever - she won't want food, she won't feel hunger. But actually eating solid food that will sustain her life, or returning to her own world to do so - that's a different subject entirely, and it's not covered by the carefully-phrased promise on the candle.

      In a modern setting, I'm staying somewhere for the night with a small group of other people. Other groups are here as well, and there's concerns about space, so when I finally see the room we've been given I'm surprised by how big it is. There aren't many beds, but there's a lot of floor space, there should be no problem. We all sort out spaces for our bedrolls, and some of us go over the movies we have between us. I wonder if I can convince the others to put on Near Dark. The floor's becoming crowded, and I just manage to find a space for my backpack; on top of the backpack I place a stuffed animal shaped like a dog, which I'm aware contains a guardian dog spirit who protected me from the ghost of a dead girl earlier tonight.

      Updated 03-04-2014 at 01:01 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    10. The sky barrier, monitoring an android, trains and ships and gods

      by , 01-21-2014 at 10:16 PM
      I'm looking at some kind of travel ad with a picture of a bridge and a quote calling it magical. A woman's complaining about the misuse of the quote - apparently it's a line from the end of a long poem about a more literal variety of magic, and the way the ad is using it is going completely against the spirit of the poem. She summarizes the poem, saying something along the lines of 'magic's one and only purpose: getting us outta here.'

      As I think about what that means, I become lucid. I'm floating above the bridge from the image in that ad, high over a river, surrounded by trees; I fly along the road, over the trees, flying higher until I can see that this is an island, and I fly out over the water. It's all very beautiful, but I'm still thinking about what that woman had said, and I associate it with a quote from Tolkien in defense of escapism. (The quote: Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home?) Thinking about Tolkien, I think that while I'm lucid, I'll go find some elves. But suddenly I feel a desperate need to, as the woman said, get outta here - rather than flying peacefully over the water, now I'm thinking of the sky as a barrier I have to break through; I'm very worked up about it. I fail completely.

      When I stop trying to break through the sky, I find I'm now flying outside my IRL home.
      I land in a tree. My IRL neighbor's on the steps outside with some people I think of as her cousins, and she sees me. I feel embarrassed, a grown man climbing trees. The branch I'm sitting on breaks with a very loud crack, and although I don't fall very far at all, they run over to me. She scolds me for climbing trees when people are trying to sleep. We go inside. I'm still vaguely aware that I'm dreaming, but I'm thinking that I'll have to wait for these people to leave before I can do anything very interesting.

      I 'wake up' on a bus. I think about the lucid dream I just had, but am distracted when Danica Patrick starts making out with the woman sitting next to me. (And yet it doesn't occur to me that I might still be dreaming...)

      I'm in an office, talking to someone about the android I've been monitoring. The guy I'm talking to is the same model, and I'm asking him about some of the skills he was programmed with; I think there might be something wrong with the one I've been observing, she seems to have let some of her skills decay. He hints that maybe I've got an ulterior motive here, and he's right, but I insist I'm only concerned about my employer (their manufacturer)'s reputation. I'm thinking I'm going to have to download a training program so I can pose as a servant and infiltrate her owner's household.

      (Woke up. Had an unusually difficult time getting back to sleep, I was up for at least an hour.)

      There's two men sitting in front of a fireplace, a young man and an old one. The young man's saying, "Don't you want to help me?" There's a long pause. The young man isn't aware of it, but the person he's speaking to is his father-in-law; his wife, the old man's daughter, has recently passed away, and for some reason the old man thinks it's to his benefit to keep that connection secret. Now the old man says, "Your wife... Very sweet creature."

      (Woke up. Back to sleep without difficulty this time.)

      I'm on a train named after a greek goddess; I've just changed from a train called Autehna (which is meant to be Athena - my dreams have mixed up that name in a similar way before, again pronouncing it with a 't' instead of 'th'), and I'm thinking of the naming of the two trains as pleasantly symbolically appropriate. I'm writing in a journal. As I write, I see an image of what I'm writing about: a very powerful and morally dubious man offered me a position, and I turned him down, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. In the journal, I write that I must have learned in another life to refuse to get tangled up with the wicked and powerful.

      Continuing as the same character from the train, I find my wife and children asleep around/under the Christmas tree.

      Still the same character, I'm standing on a dock next to a rowboat full of men in red uniforms, casting off. I'm in the same uniform, as is the man beside me, but the two of us aren't going back to the ship with the rest. I'm thinking about that position I'd turned down, and the possible ill will resulting from that refusal, and I start to feel suspicious about the guy next to me. When I look at him, he takes off running down the dock, reaching for a rope. I reach for the weapon I've concealed in my false leg, and as I remove it I hear someone say "mon dieu!" I'm thinking about the various bits and pieces of myself that I've left behind.

      (Woke up, once again couldn't get back to sleep and eventually gave up on it, even though I'd gotten only about 5 hours of sleep. Unusual.)

      Updated 01-22-2014 at 03:04 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid , false awakening , lucid
    11. Wrath and Ares, the Prince and the Magician

      by , 01-17-2014 at 10:52 PM
      There's a vampire who looks like a kid, who'd been having some kind of serious problems, but is assuring a friend of his that he's past them now. He's also discovered that, as a result of those problems, he can eat solid food now, and he's trying to stay off blood. He's optimistic about it. "I've been having some sickness, but-" His friend laughs, patronizingly. As a 3rd person observer, I side with the friend - this is a bad idea.

      There's a woman working at some kind of community center, and a man who seems to be drunk outside, holding a knife. She's saying to him through the door, "Go home, Ray! You're sick! You need help!" Afterwards she starts thinking about fated events, and timing.

      I'm working with a team of bounty hunters to catch two people, allowing one of them to lead us to the other without letting him realize he's being followed. We catch up to them in the woods, and they're both here, but they're unconscious, and surrounded by two "Wraths" - some semi-divine role, working for Ares. They're waiting for their master, who arrives just after we do.

      Three people discussing a conversation they just had with a police captain who hired them. One of them uses the slang term "NeuTrooL", a pun on "new" and "true" and "neutral", which means information given by someone who mistakenly believes their view is an objective truth, completely neutral, when in fact it's influenced by their own bias.

      A woman's telling me about her dreams, with a large cast of recurring characters and ongoing storylines. She's telling me her most recent one, about "the Prince and the Magician", and says that the Prince is captive but still playing an active role in events. As she talks, I see the prince sitting in a room that has something crystalline about it; he's a fae-looking thing, and he's sitting in front of a mirror with a spell on it, talking to someone at a distance. The creature in the mirror is very large, and has fur. The woman telling the story mentions the name Ba'alrael.

      Updated 01-18-2014 at 01:53 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    12. Fragments

      by , 01-15-2014 at 12:19 AM
      Dune-based, a Fremen leader has just died and everyone's chanting the name of someone they're choosing for the new Naib, a well-respected middle-aged man known for being level-headed. But they're interrupted by Paul and Jessica, performing some Bene Gesserit trick with light that makes them appear god-like, a move to take power over the Fremen. It works. I find it extremely distasteful.

      My IRL mother weighing a desire to give up physical possessions against the potential uses for the land she owns, and considering an apiary.

      A wrong number from an angry woman looking for a Melissa. (Not the one from the myths specifically, but still presumably inspired by the apiary bit.)

      I'm looking at a digital folder labeled 'Eric'; none of the files inside have anything to do with him.

      An earlier, lower-budget movie version of Barbarella.

      A variety of nautical references: ornaments shaped like ships, a trip to the beach and a mention of pirates.

      A painting of pale, black-haired elves with ravens on their shoulders, in a park.

      Two homeless men, one with a dog, the other a preacher standing on a wooden crate, arguing about Jesus and whether or not he spent a lifetime as a cat.

      "So ever shall be considered the gardens of Biblios."
    13. Hooded figure in the mirror, angels and vampires who fell

      by , 01-14-2014 at 12:47 AM
      I'm standing in front of a row of elevators with reflective gold-colored doors, and in a sort of voiceover I'm hearing what sounds like an article about a scientific study of reflections. There's a lot of information that sounded reasonable at the time but didn't actually translate to waking life - for example, your eyes perceive this angle of motion and expect an impact that never comes, causing tension, and resulting in your attention focusing on this or that minor detail. As I get into the elevator, the article is saying something about there being two different ways to think of reflections which both carry different benefits, and it goes on to explain the two ways. I find this interesting and decide to experiment with switching to the other way of thinking, which is viewing your reflection as a separate person, even expecting it to talk. Acting on the article's advice, I address my reflection on the mirrored elevator wall. My reflection's a great deal taller than me, and completely covered by a hooded cloak. I find I like him - or it - a great deal.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Some vague fragment involving briefly passing through an exhibit to do with planets, and something about Artemis.

      There's a woman who's determined to hold onto the hand of some monstrously deformed figure who keeps trying to shy away. She's thinking about how she's been through some kinds of transformations in the past herself, so it takes more than some monstrous appearance to frighten her off. The monstrous one's thinking something about Cain, and something about two angels, one in favor of allowing the other's creations - humans - to develop variations of themselves (which is to say, to have children); the one who created them was opposed; and now he's found his downfall in a relationship with a human, which wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for that decision, allowing the humans to develop into new variations.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a man who's been running through the halls of a house and now reaches a dead end, a study with a portrait, which I briefly thought was a mirror. A man who's been following him at a walking pace comes into the room and starts talking about the portrait, and about the history of the man in the painting, who was - is? - a vampire. He says, "They forgive him the very thing he (something)," and then something about "fell." Meanwhile the man who'd been running is stumbling around the room with his hand over his stomach like he's been injured, saying "Please!" There's a resemblance between him and the portrait.

      Updated 01-14-2014 at 12:51 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    14. Fates and timelines

      by , 12-23-2013 at 11:41 PM
      Part of a castle has been blocked off to the public for a photoshoot I'm working on. There's a woman hanging around just outside the blocked off area, watching us; she's very pretty, with long red hair under a hat. It starts raining a little and we take a break, and I go over to smoke by the entrance. That woman comes over to me and we start talking. After a while, she tells me she's the daughter of someone I know, someone I watched die in hospital just yesterday. Thing is, in the present, that daughter is just a young child; I have a mental image of seeing her, as a child, in the hospital. There's something to do with timelines or the dead going on. I don't believe her. She tells me she's wanted to see me, and implies that in her own time, I'm dead. Some other people from the photoshoot come over then and distract me for a moment, and then the woman is no longer there.

      I can't get a couple light switches to work, and realize this is a dream. (Noteworthy: that's a common dream sign for me, but up until now, it only happened if I went to sleep so early that it was still dark IRL, usually around 5 AM. This time I went to sleep at a normal hour, after sunrise.) I have a false awakening: I'm in my IRL bed, but am fairly sure I'm still dreaming. I wonder what to do with this - I look up at the ceiling and consider removing it and going flying. However, I'm distracted by the sound of a crash, and I see my computer (an old desktop model which I don't actually own IRL) has fallen over and broken. I forget about dreaming and get irrationally stressed about having to replace the computer. (I suspect there may have been an actual noise IRL that affected the dream.)

      Based on F/SN, a bunch of photos showing the future of various timelines. I focus on one showing Saber in a park by a lake, with skyscrapers in the background, and it becomes the setting of the dream; someone who I at first mistake for Archer is teasing her, and he winds up falling in the lake. He's wearing some sort of uniform that I associate with the Mage's Association, and which I think of as being 'Saber's colors' (it's blue and gold), marking them as partners; then I realize he's an older Shirou, not a version of Archer.

      I'm approaching a dance in the woods together with someone I know, and I recognize the song playing - Bottom of the River, Delta Rae. We walk over to three woman sitting around a fire, to speak with them. I think of the Fates and the Graces.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm Shirou, and Tohsaka's just walked away from those three women from the previous scene, and before I follow her, one of those women says to me, "Nothing like that to make your magic full of fear." I'm thinking that I have just enough awareness of Archer's memories to know there's something I don't want to remember; remembering it would cause me to repeat the same choices he made, and that's not what this timeline's for.

      I'm reading an article about genius, stating that long-term caffeine use has disruptive effects on the brain.

      I'm trying to buy something but I've upset the woman working the counter somehow and she's refusing to ring me up, or any of the other customers for that matter. She goes so far as to call the police. I literally offer her the shirt off my back - a basketball jersey, something that's worth something to her. We strike up a conversation, and she winds up being friendly.
    15. Fragments

      by , 11-09-2013 at 10:08 PM
      A woman's talking to some kind of spirit in a mirror, something that's teaching her magic. Watching this, it strikes me that the stories about vampires and mirrors come from the same place as this creature.

      Based on AHS, 3 witches (including the supreme and her daughter), the daughter's blind, the other two are each missing one eye. Someone makes a blind-leading-the-blind joke. I'm thinking about the Graeae passing an eye between them.

      Partners looking for a serial killer had three suspects in mind, but tracking them down has ruled each of them out. One of detectives is approached by a woman who believes her husband, Darryl, may be the killer. The detective ignores her, having heard many claims like this; but ignoring this one is a mistake, the woman's claim is true.

      Four teenage girls have barricaded themselves in a room, two of them trying to protect the other two. There's some form of cult that's taken root in the town, there's an image of a girl in a bathtub covered in blood related to this; and the cult's summoning these two girls now, but they need the girls to come to them, they can't enter the room themselves. A girl from the cult appears outside the door as a sort of delegate, to talk.

      Dorian Gray is talking to someone about the house he wants to leave, and the way memories seem have ingrained themselves in the very walls: the scent of a decomposing body even though he's long since disposed of it, the sound of music on the stairs although the musician's gone.
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