• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    1. The artist in the arena

      by , 01-11-2017 at 08:41 AM
      I'm talking to a man, a great inventor or artist of some kind, who's been given an arena to work in. The structure is very white and the sky is very wide and very blue, and the arena's filled with shadowy figures he's been given to work for him, something like automatons, not alive. Human-shaped, but when I focus on them they look a bit like something that's been burned to charcoal, flaking at the edges, except for their teeth, which are white and sharp; inactive right now.

      Until this moment I had a lot of contempt for this man. But he's saying to me, "I'm not an idiot," and that he knows he's already made his last great work. Though he's currently working on a project, and though his masters who gave him this arena have great expectations of him, he doesn't expect to live to complete it. His bitterness makes me think a little more highly of him.

      Working for these things was a mistake. I don't say this to him out loud. There are a couple floating hooded figures with white masks in the arena, and we're both putting on something of an act for them. They're not his bosses, or guards, exactly, but they are effectively monitoring him at the moment. Something more like citizens, as opposed to slaves like him, however honored a slave he might be. He turns off the music he's been listening to while he works, and he's trying to give the impression that he's simply stopping work for now and going to bed as usual, that there's nothing wrong.
    2. Jules in Bangladesh

      by , 12-01-2015 at 07:39 PM
      There's a party full of drunk and pretty people I've gotten caught up in; it's being held in the honor of someone I don't really know, and when a group splits off for the private party, I go with them. The door closes behind me and Jules. Jules is dead sober - I'm not - and he doesn't look amused.

      I'm talking to him about the person I've been trying to meet up with, a guy who's meant to be part of this group of party people somewhere; I'd first met him in a cell in Bangladesh, where I'd been trying to track down a particular object. I'm trying to stir Jules' memory of that time, but he just nods, goes yeah, yeah - he's annoyed.

      He says, "Was I shot?" in a tone that suggests this happens frequently, and is probably my fault.

      "In the left arm," I tell him.

      He looks at the fingers of that arm, and I see a mental image of the neck of a stringed instrument. The implication is that getting shot affected his ability to play. Jules says, less annoyed now, "I do remember that one."
    3. Que Sera, Sera

      by , 08-06-2015 at 05:38 PM
      Disembodied, I'm standing on the second floor, looking over a railing down at the main hall of this three-floor antebellum mansion filled with women waltzing to Que Sera, Sera. There's men here too, but they might as well be props, they're not what I'm here to see. A fire breaks out with no apparent cause, and I recognize what moment in time this must be; the fire here is a reflection of what's happening in reality in the place where they're sleeping. One of the women is caught in the fire and starts screaming. And then the fire's gone, and she's fine, and they go back to dancing. Though they're not aware of it, the end of the fire signified the end of their connection with reality; their sleeping bodies have died, and they won't be able to leave this dream world.
      Categories
      non-lucid
    4. Tithe to hell

      by , 07-01-2015 at 07:17 PM
      Two women are speaking. One of them, the only human in this dream, has made a deal to trade places with someone. But it's being explained to her now that the person she's traded places with was fated to die at a certain age; they were to be what's referred to as the tithe to hell. That's now her job. At 24, she's already past that age.

      The woman explaining this to her sounds amused at her situation, but she resents the tithe to hell itself - doesn't like having to submit to someplace else's authority. The human picks up on this resentment, and makes a suggestion. She believes that as a human, she can access the place they refer to as hell in a way that this woman can't; there's something stored there that allows that place to hold authority here. If she could reach it, there'd be no need for the tithe. It's unlikely to work, but still an intriguing offer.

      Scene change. The human's standing at the back of a line passing through a small gate in a rock tunnel. The other people here are goblin-like creatures, and she's wearing the same type of clothes as theirs for a disguise, along with an eyepatch - the eyepatch is important because the people here all bear wounds proudly. Although the guard at the gate is familiar with most of the people passing through, talking like they're old friends, he apparently isn't bothered by a stranger's presence; he waves her through without a second look.

      Listening to a song with the line, "I ran away from my vows."
    5. Two escape routes and a rose

      by , 06-01-2015 at 07:05 PM
      I'm walking through the basement of a tower, grey stone walls. There's some kind of chaos going on on the main floors above me, a distraction while I was taking care of something in the dungeon on the next floor down - but now that it's time to go, I want to avoid getting caught in whatever's happening on the main level.

      There's two people waiting for me with two different escape routes - neither of them knows exactly what I was doing here, neither of them knows me personally, and neither them knows about the other. There's a person I work with who'd arranged for a man to meet me by the stairs up to the main floors, but I'm having second thoughts about trusting him. And there's a woman waiting by a wooden door that leads elsewhere; she's not involved at all, she just wants to escape whatever's going on upstairs and is willing to take me with her, recognizing me as a friend of a friend. I believe she would be more sympathetic to what I was doing here, if it came out.

      Deciding to go with that woman at the wooden door, I'm doubling back, passing by the stairs leading down to the dungeon. I debate whether I have time to go back down there - there had been something else I'd wanted to look into down there, though it's not a priority. I start down those steps, but it becomes so dark I can't see, and I have a vague impression of massive chains. I can hear a woman's voice crying. I decide I don't have time to be fumbling around in the dark, and I head back up the stairs.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A man is looking at a wall recently painted green in an attempt to emulate some other place, and talking to someone about a man he knows, saying that while he wasn't looking, the man went and got married to people so unsuited - people, plural, meaning both the wife and the stepkids - people he'll have to keep secrets from.

      I'm watching light play over the features of the man in question in an interesting way. He's looking at a signet ring with an image of a rose, which he's just removed from a hiding place in the base of a lamp. I'm hearing a kind of tinkling sound like a music box repeating a single measure over and over again.
    6. The scorpion and the frog

      by , 05-25-2015 at 07:31 PM
      There's a woman who is retrieving a certain object for me, while I watch in third person. The object is in a cave, in the possession of this large, strange creature who she's speaking to now - she's got two or three people with her. He's willing to make a deal. But after discussing terms for a while, the woman ultimately refuses; she isn't willing to agree to his terms. He accepts this, clearly believing she'll be back eventually - she has no other choice, she needs that object.

      She and the others start to leave, but one of the others evidently has their own plan - another woman starts playing a strange kind of music that puts the creature into a kind of trance. She encourages the leader of their group to simply take the object. The leader is conflicted, so the woman with the music does it herself. The creature's trance is deep enough to allow her to get close to the object, but it snaps out of it once it recognizes that they're stealing from it. They run.

      The cave is in the center of a sort of maze of tunnels, but although it looks confusing, the tunnels are all interconnected; as long as they keep running in the same general direction, it doesn't matter which tunnel they choose, they'll get out eventually.

      They come out of the tunnels into a place that I think of as a certain type of dream, a sort of desert-like place, barren brown rock, with various dreamers here and there like landmarks. In one dream, there's a family in a yard where grapevines are growing; two heavyset old men who are brothers, and two grandchildren playing a little distance away. One brother leans in to say something to the other in a language I don't recognize, and the eyes of the one listening turn all black, which I recognize as an outward sign of the usual effect of staying in this particular type of dream too long. He's the dreamer here, these others are illusions. They see the group passing near the edges of the dream and just watch them.

      The group comes across a dreamer they know, a man who the leader of this group is in love with. The others hang back on a ledge overlooking his dream, but she approaches him. He's sitting in front of the ruins of a small house - it's meant to be their house, his and hers, though they've never actually lived together outside of this dream. There's dead bodies lying around outside, things he killed, but too late to save this place from them. When he sees her there, he says, "I tried," with a sort of smile, as if this was inevitable and the only surprising thing was that he tried to save this place at all.

      Then he sees the object she's stolen, and there's a shift - he stops paying attention to the storyline of the dream he's in. He asks her why she went to all the trouble of finding that thing, when there's no guarantee that the man she got it for will be grateful for it. There's an association here with trying to help a scorpion - the story of the scorpion and the frog, doing what's in your nature rather than what's in your best interest. She agrees with him, there's no guarantee that this will have the result she wants, but she wants to help the 'scorpion' anyway. She makes a joke about having a weakness for older men - lifetimes older, in this case. Her man doesn't find this funny.
    7. An unusual transition

      by , 03-07-2015 at 11:22 PM
      After a DA:O-based scene about pleasantly passing time with Zevran, I have a false awakening and go lucid in a much less pleasant setting: a college dorm where people are being influenced in their sleep by some sinister mental voice - I could make out his tone but not his words. My initial intent was to investigate this without letting the source of the voice realize I was immune to his influence, mimicking the behavior of his victims, but I approach a stone wall surrounding the building and decide nah, I'd rather just leave. I fly over the wall with some slight resistance which I think of as coming from the source of that voice, unwilling to let any of his prey escape.

      This takes me down to a river surrounded by great grey boulders, leading down to the sea; as I follow the river it becomes filled by creatures similar to dolphins or porpoises - but incredibly ugly. I'm still feeling a sort of dragging effect from the scene I'd just left, resistance to moving further away; the water and open air feel refreshing but the animals' ugly appearance reflects some negative feel that's still affecting the dream.

      There's a song in my head, and I choose to focus on the song instead of on my surroundings - an upbeat dance song from the 60s. I begin to see a music video that goes with it, though not vividly, more like daydreaming, still firmly aware of my surroundings along that river. I'm thinking this could be an interesting opportunity.

      The music video has a wipe transition effect, like a clock hand sweeping around, and I focus on it - and now the music video has changed scenes from a dance hall to a boardwalk, and I've transitioned with it. I'm observing the boardwalk from above, 3rd person, with no more sense of that river with the sea creatures, or of the general feeling of unpleasantness from the past few scenes. I'm surprised that worked. It's unusually unvivid, though, still about the quality of a daydream; I wonder if I'm waking up. I shift my perspective, now standing on that boardwalk in the 60s, with a row of brilliantly colored pinball machines off to my right. That's much better.
      I drop back to non-lucidity for two more scenes.

      Updated 03-07-2015 at 11:30 PM by 64691

      Categories
      false awakening , lucid , non-lucid
    8. Eggs Benedict, bland 90s music, and narrative versus command

      by , 02-13-2015 at 10:35 PM
      Circumstances have caused a woman to temporarily move in with me; we're not romantically entangled in any way. At the moment I'm cooking breakfast and she's sitting at the table - she's asked for eggs benedict. I'm mentioning some gadget that was around in the 50s for cooking breakfast that I'd liked, I don't know why they don't make that one anymore.

      As we're talking, at some point I make a reference to something else that had happened in the 50s, and she gets the reference and responds as if she was also there. The character side of me doesn't take notice of this, but the dreamer side of me finds it odd that she got that reference - I take this as an indication that she's also, if not immortal, at least significantly older than her appearance. It's also clear that she knows I'm not human, though the character side of me doesn't know she knows.

      When I bring the food to the table, I say something to her and she responds with yes, father, and then immediately looks embarrassed. The character side of me takes it as a joke in response to what I'd just said to her - but the dreamer side of me is thinking, that explains it.

      I'm dancing with a different woman in my apartment. She's got short black hair in this 20s finger wave look, deliberately trying to recreate that look from the past, but this is the 1990s, and she's mortal. The dreamer side of me thinks of the song we're listening to as 'bland, inoffensive 90s romance music.' She's describing some kind of dull pain that lasts for weeks on end, and asks if I can imagine living like that, expecting the answer to be no. I have, actually. I try to describe the actual sensation without being specific about the setting, but she figures it out immediately and gets excited: "The Inquisition? You were there?" She always gets excited about these big name historical events she's read about, and they're never the parts worth remembering.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Someone of no immediately identifiable gender, who has been on the road for a very long time, parks their truck outside my IRL home and starts to eat lunch, clearly believing that no one is around here during the daytime. When they see me watching them from the window they start to leave, but I stop them, telling them I don't mind them stopping here.

      Unfortunately, the dream apparently took that as an open invitation. While I'm outside talking to them, a great deal of people walk into the house - a married couple under the misimpression that it's theirs now and all their relatives. When I confront them they quickly accept that an error has been made, but they still keep standing around in the house. Telling them to get out does nothing.

      So I rephrase, framing it as a narrative instead of a command. "And the people walked out of the house."

      And giving no indication that they've heard me, as if it's their own idea, they all turn and start making their way out of the house.
      I'm pleased by how easy and effective that was compared to trying to control through commands - admittedly I hadn't put any mental force behind the command here, but there wasn't any mental effort involved in the narrative approach either. They're moving more slowly than I'd like, so I continue narrating. "It's a beautiful day, so they all decided to go outside." I'm curious whether the weather will respond to that - it doesn't seem to, but then it was decent weather to begin with. They're all outside now, but they're milling around outside the door. "They all decided to go to the park to catch up with their relatives." They start moving toward the road, and the women closest to me have started discussing some cousin they haven't seen in a while. This is really wonderfully effective, I'll have to remember that in the future.
    9. Futures

      by , 02-06-2015 at 10:47 PM
      There's a teenage girl who's come to me to learn her futures. I've spread them out like cards on the table, and as I hold my hand over one depicting a man she could be married to, she says she wouldn't mind that one so much, that wouldn't be so bad. I have the impression that she doesn't feel she has a choice in any of this - she might want to know what the options are, and she might have her own preferences, but someone else will be making the decision, not her.

      With that in mind, I move to one of the futures on the outside edge, the more unlikely options. It's labeled Dreamer. I see her lying on a couch with an arm thrown over her head, looking at the ceiling, wasting away. Her clothes are glowing green like an absinthe advertisement. Since I think of her as wasting away here, I conclude that this is a future she wouldn't want and start to move my hand away, but that vision version of her stops me. She sings, "I listened to my dreams." This is important to her. It's not something she regrets. "They taught me how to feel." Behind her there's a glass window opening onto a balcony, from which I can see a river and the stars. There's a whale swimming through the clouds, adding to the fantastical nature of her possible future.
    10. Watching a dance

      by , 02-05-2015 at 10:32 PM
      A human wandered into our territory and due to an accident, got stuck here. He's spent the past few days trying to figure out a way out of this, but right now he's relaxing with us. He's taken some of the things out of his luggage and has been showing us how they work, and now he's putting on a demonstration. He's a performer, a dancer, and he's showing us what he'd been working on before the accident got him stuck here. A woman's joining him, he gave her a costume to wear, a white dress. The man directly to my left is in charge of starting the music at his signal; he's been spending more time with this guy than any of the rest of us except the woman he's dancing with, so he's learned how to make records work. The rest of us are sitting around on the rocks in a circle, watching.

      In the center of the clearing below us, he and the woman take each other's hands as if starting a formal dance. He repositions her closer to him, and she 'laughs' and 'says' that they're going to be dancing right on top of each other this way - in quotes because we don't use sound to 'talk,' though the laughing expression/gesture is the same.

      He starts to lead her through the dance. The dreamer side of me recognizes this as a sort of mix of an old court dance with modern sensibilities; the same could be said for the dress he gave her to wear, a sort of fantasy version of medieval clothes, very much a costume. From this perspective, it's clear that this was a dance designed for a specific performance, but the dream character side of me is under the vague misimpression that this is just how his people dance to celebrate things. Either way, I'm enjoying watching.

      His actions are oddly tentative, uncertain, more so than hers though he's the one teaching. I find that hesitation fun to watch, too. I'm also aware that this is the moment when he started to doubt whether he wanted to leave at all - so of course his immediate reaction was to become even more determined to get out as soon as possible.

      (The next two dreams after waking up and going back to sleep were also on the subject of dances and concerts.)
      Categories
      non-lucid
    11. Death in a theatre

      by , 02-04-2015 at 09:43 PM
      I'm at a formal party midway through the 20th century, and everyone's talking about the mysterious disappearance of the leading lady during intermission tonight. I'm as baffled as anyone, though in a slightly different way - I killed her, but I left the body in her dressing room. Someone else removed the body, and I need to find out who and why.

      We pair off and start to dance, and I focus on a man who's not dancing, just watching the rest of us - he's in some position of authority in the theatre. I switch to third person, and now I see the scene as he does - he 'saw' that leading lady emerge from between two of the dancing couples, a pale woman dressed in red, black hair pulled back tight to her head, with a haughty and sort of mocking look on her face. That attitude doesn't square with the way I remember her at all; it's clear to me that the version of her he's seeing is his own hallucination, not an actual visit from her spirit.

      She puts a hand on his shoulder and begins to dance along to the song with the rest of us, though he's not moving with her. She circles around him, saying that she knew from the start that this wouldn't work. She sings along to the music: "-won't let me leave you, but amore, that's to blame."
    12. Ephigenia, an interrogation, don't interrupt the music, St. George and the dragon,

      by , 02-01-2015 at 10:07 PM
      I'm giving a woman a ride somewhere in a carriage, and when she's gotten settled I knock on the wall twice and we start moving. I go to lower the curtains on the windows, and as I do I catch sight of her fiance out on the street, obviously looking for her. She's already made it clear she doesn't want to be found at this moment. As I'm looking at him I'm struck again by how incredibly dull he seems. I say to her, "On God's green earth, what do you see in him?" I gave up my chance with her so I have no right to judge the man she chose, but still - him?

      She says, "On God's green earth, I won't let you steal my plan. I can't." Either she has drastically changed the subject or else I've drastically misunderstood their relationship - either way, I have no idea what she's talking about.

      Just then, her fiance spots us - I should have lowered that curtain - and he shouts her name, Ephigenia. He is being ridiculously overdramatic, people will think I'm kidnapping her.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Disembodied, I'm watching my son be interrogated by a pair of policemen. We don't have any legal ties under my present identity, at his insistence - he's old enough now that we look the same age, so adopting him again wouldn't have been practical, but I'd wanted to arrange something, and he'd refused. I'm particularly annoyed about that now, when a legal connection would come in handy.

      They've accused him and his sister - his biological sister, I didn't raise her, hadn't known she was alive until just now - of murder, and he's been repeatedly telling them he's innocent, but they've just produced an audio recording of what is clearly his voice stating that "we" - he and his sister - have been waiting for this since he was nine years old. As I hear the recording, I see a mental image of him at the moment he spoke those words, with a man tied up in front of them. Up until this moment I'd believed he was innocent. Back in the interrogation room, he's insisting that the voice on the recorder isn't his, but he's clearly fooling no one. They've been letting him tell his story, knowing he was lying the entire time.

      I've heard enough. I remove my awareness from the interrogation room. Back in my body, I'm standing in my son's apartment - a tiny studio with a mattress on the floor, cluttered with random piles of clothes and other things. He wasn't doing well. I'm extremely annoyed about this situation - he'd betrayed me, he'd made it clear he was going to cause trouble for me, but for him to simply be removed from the situation like this by unrelated people, that doesn't sit right with me.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm running - as fast as I can manage, which isn't very - along a snow-covered mountain path, trying to hold my throat closed as much as possible. I'm wearing black leather gloves, the blood blends in very well. This isn't the first time I've had my throat slit, so at least this time I know my voice will come back eventually - just the memory of how frightening it had been the first time I had my throat slit still makes me uncomfortable. It's still incredibly inconvenient until it heals. One of my least favorite ways to 'die.' I'm thinking about the man who 'killed' me - a soldier on the same side I am. I don't know why he did this - he enjoys violence in general, so I'm hoping it was just something personal and not something larger I'd have to worry about.

      Thinking about that man's possible motivations prompts a scene change. I'm peeling an orange as a visitor goes upstairs to meet with that man who'll slit my throat. I can hear the sound of an opera recording on the phonograph, and I warned the visitor that it's best not to interrupt while he's listening to his music - I didn't say this, but I'm pretty sure opera is the only thing that man loves aside from violence - but the visitor ignored me. Shortly later I hear the visitor scream.

      I'm looking at a painting with the artist beside me. St. George and the dragon - I recognize that the dragon is meant to be myself. After noticing that, I recognize who St. George is meant to represent too. I say to her, very slowly and deliberately, "George can't save you." Whether I can do anything for her either isn't certain, but "George" definitely can't, despite what he believes.
    13. Faust and a god's tower

      by , 01-31-2015 at 08:21 PM
      A production of Faust, I'm going over a written list of the scenery needed for each scene. One scene is described as the Altar of Hell, and I have a mental image of Faust being pinned to a circular stone by two demons; that's the contract signing scene. The next scene is set in a field surrounded by trees, and my perspective changes so I see this as the audience would.

      Curtain rises on Marguerite and women of the chorus in the field; shortly afterward Faust enters from the right. In response to what the women had been singing, he sings something satirical about the dangers of love and the unfortunate fools who are caught up in it. This annoys Marguerite, and she turns away and pointedly ignores him. The women of the chorus exit, and Faust realizes how angry Marguerite is, so he jokes around in the hopes of getting back in her good graces, teasing her by singing a humorous song that starts with a verse about roosters and hens. She forgives him easily, and by the time he gets to the chorus she's joined in the song, flirting right back at him. The second verse is about deer and hunters, and she playfully leads him on a chase around the stage. As they exit, laughing, Mephistopheles strolls by in the background, keeping an eye on how things are playing out.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There are four men, or people who were once men and are now weapons, kept chained up in their sleep. Two 'chains,' really - the collars around their throats, but also something much deeper that's never meant to be removed. I'm removing that second 'chain' from each of them. They wake up as I do so, and their first reaction is to moan about the pain, but gradually they regain a sort of awareness. It's interesting to watch - they're becoming aware of how much of their personality has been stripped away from them, but without actually regaining that personality they lost. Their master arrives then, and I expect them to attack him in revenge - that's the whole reason I freed them - but instead they cower in the corner, just looking at the pair of us.

      Memory gap. Next thing I remember, I've gone semi-lucid in order to pursue that master of theirs. He's closed himself off inside a tower where I shouldn't be able to follow, with an irritatingly arrogant attitude about it - he's essentially the god of this place, it won't allow me entrance if it goes against his will. Or at least it's not supposed to. The tower's a sort of futuristic art deco confection, lots of spheres and glowing purple lights, and I'm flying around it, demanding that it create an opening. With my next pass around the tower, I find an entrance has been created, opening onto a single room containing an elevator. It signifies that this place is as willing to depose its 'god' as I am. I take the elevator up to that man's private sanctuary - the elevator doors open to show me a vast pool lined with twisted white trees without leaves, and quite a lot of statues, including some of himself. This guy is unbelievable. There's a mansion at the far end of the pool, and I expect his mental trail to lead me there, but instead it leads me off to the right, to another body of water, and I focus on a light at the end of a pier.

      Updated 01-31-2015 at 09:59 PM by 64691

      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid
    14. A ghost story, no life is cheap, a tango

      by , 01-25-2015 at 12:04 AM
      I'm being told a story. There's a man, a shapeshifter who can seem to be anyone, but when he smiles you see the shards of glass filling his mouth, grotesquely. I see the moment he'd died, falling from a horse and landing on a glass bottle full of something he'd been carrying, shattering it.

      The story shifts to the woman he'd loved when he was alive. She was called a witch, and a mob took her and chained her to a tree in the forest, with a circle of some kind of wooden pegs placed in the ground to prevent the body from leaving that spot after death. Her body's left there without her head. I 'hear' the body briefly feel a dim sort of awareness of the presence of something familiar and loved nearby.

      Over time, the body comes loose from the chains as it decomposes, sinks into the ground and is covered by - I hear the word 'loam', but I'm seeing moss growing over the body. The arms separate from the rest and hang from the chains. At one point, a horse that had belonged to her while she was alive comes to the tree and noses at those decaying arms, and they reach out and pat it. At another time, the body rises up from the ground and seems to dance, with those arms dancing along as if they were still attached - slightly altering how my vision works, I can see dark strings which would be invisible, manipulating the body like a puppet. That man with the mouth full of glass shards is pulling the strings.

      Later, a scene in which I'm using Mephisto as a pseudonym.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      On a ship after some incident in which several of the crew died, the captain came to me privately to ask a question. He's under the mistaken impression that I can see the future. I don't see the future, I just have more memories to draw on to recognize old patterns playing out again. The captain asks, essentially, whether any of those who died were important - he uses the word 'cheap.' I say to him, "No life is cheap." He acknowledges that this was poor phrasing, but "I need to know-"

      As he speaks, I see a go board. The point is made that certain moves will have a drastic impact on the outcome of the game, and others won't. The captain needs to know if any of the people we lost would have been necessary for this journey to succeed, in ways he can't foresee himself.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm looking at paintings hanging on a wall, a series mostly depicting figures of the zodiac, with one in the center of a man labeled Dream.

      I'm meeting with a man named Snow who'd initially tried to conceal his identity from me. He's disappointed to find I recognized him immediately. The persona he'd put on for me was this sort of affable type; the real Snow is - well, he gives the impression of being intimidating but I'm not personally intimidated, I'm just enjoying watching how complete his transformation is.

      The majority of the scene after that reveal consists of a tango, during which he leads - which is different, but I find I have no difficulty following. Great fun. He's proposing some kind of deal - there's something about him recognizing the way I've been challenging myself, and how working for him would be beneficial for both of us, something about working for a greater cause, a sense of direction - but when the tango's over and he wants an answer, I just start laughing. Man, have you got the wrong guy. I'm thoroughly enjoying every aspect of his presentation - the intimidating attitude, the seriousness of the deal he's proposing, the song and dance, his whole look - it's all incredibly appealing, but I have no intention of taking it seriously.

      Updated 01-25-2015 at 12:08 AM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid
    15. A phonograph played too loud

      by , 01-21-2015 at 09:56 PM
      A concerned-looking woman and a businesslike man are checking in on a man who's recently been dug up from a grave - not his original one; someone else had decided to lock him up for a while. They'd been able to find him and retrieve him, but he'd needed some time to recover. The man he's staying with stops them at the door and says, "I don't know if he's ready for this yet." The businesslike man says something to the effect of "ready or not" and comes inside anyway. It's very pleasant inside - an open plan, wood paneling, lots of plants, dim lights with a slightly orange tint. There's a phonograph playing an old string quartet at a ridiculously loud volume. This is a modern setting, so the phonograph and the choice of music indicate the man who'd been buried is trying to calm himself down by turning to things from his past. The volume, as if he's trying to drown something out, implies it's not going well.

      The man who'd tried to stop them at the door backs up so he's sort of standing guard in front of the door to the bedroom, but before the guests can force the issue, the man who'd been buried comes out on his own. Superficially looking completely recovered, friendly and open, neatly and formally dressed as usual - though as a disembodied observer, my first thought on seeing him was along the lines of, Was my hair really that short? What was wrong with me? Anyway, though he seems composed, he gives me the impression that it's just an act - that he's trying too hard to be his usual self.

      The guests are surprised, wary, to see him seemingly doing so well, and he explains to them that so often when he's gone into the ground, he'd miss out on years, decades, centuries, and he'd expected the same thing to happen again. "Tonight I am an immortal," he says, by which he means the experience of having 'died' and returned without having missed anything, with his old life and identity still in place, "and I intend to remain that way. So I've had to squash some of my plans." The implication is that he'd spent his time buried coming up with revenge fantasies - but since it turns out he's only missed a few days, he's not going to destroy the identity and life he's constructed here just to carry that out.
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