The Fourth Factor

Another dream on the verge of being lucid without quite being there. In the earliest part I can remember clearly, I’m on a computer: I’m looking up some band I’m interested in, trying to find more of their music. But the dream shifts to another scenario. It still isn’t lucid, but it’s pretty clear I’m not actually invested in it as real. I’m initially in an outdoor farm-like area with flamingos some distance away, observing interactions between characters. I only identify with one when she’s asked a question, changing to her viewpoint and responding as her. There’s a sense of making things up as I go along. I need to go somewhere now, and so I call to the nearby leopard, which I call Arthur, telling him to come with me. (I use the German pronunciation. I am about 90% sure I decided to name it after Schopenhauer.) It doesn’t want to get up, but I pull it to its feet, which it tolerates, and we walk away.

Next, I remember entering a building. It’s somewhat reminiscent of a building on a campsite, just a long rectangle, possibly something like an uninsulated metal frame, and has no interior divisions. It’s mostly empty and white, and there’s an even stronger sense of almost-lucidity here. It’s as if whatever plot there may have been has definitely gone off the rails by now, and I’m driving things, though not in a fully conscious way.

I go over to the bed in the nearest corner – other than the one by the door I entered from – and sit down on it. What follows is maybe best described as a strange kind of visual thinking – a little like reading a picture book, where I cease to really be present in the room and am absorbed in the stories that are playing out in mental space. It’s hard to describe since it isn’t exactly like anything that happens while awake – but it’s almost like there’s another presence there telling the stories.

They seem to be some kind of philosophical parable, and also a sort of story-behind-stories, representing something that was once commonly manifested in literature from an earlier time. The first one was so utterly bizarre that I can’t remember a thing about it now – but in the dream, I understand it perfectly since the meaning in all its facets and interrelations is just a part of it as it is presented. I can see it all mapped out, like a complex constellation. But some of the points are placed in the wrong locations for it to reflect reality. It’s something I was already aware of, but it’s a little sad to see it laid out like this so clearly.

There’s enough of a gap for the room to enter my awareness again before the second story begins. This one is apparently communicating the same thing as the first one did, but in a different way. I can remember the beginning of this one – how the wolves were all howling at the moon, but the moon had fallen asleep and couldn’t hear them…

5.30.21

I am on a computer, looking through files. I’m trying to find papers from an earlier part of the dream where I’d stayed after a math class drawing, and the teacher had brought over a stack of graded assignments he’d apparently been working on while I sat there. I’d just glanced at them and seen that’d I’d done really well on them before taking off, but now I want a closer look, and this was apparently where they were.

I scroll through small pictures, some of which began to move. One has expanded to fill the whole screen. It shows a house on fire, people running out. It scrolls past a small stage on which two double basses stand, one the traditional sort, another more metallic – electric by the look of it, but still a roughly double bass size and shape. It sits in a sort of flower-shaped metal pad. It catches my attention, and I’m struck by the level of detail.

I am now – not sure in what order – both present in the dream and lucid. I’m in a park-like area, a clearing with groves of trees and some woods not far off. Another stage is nearby, this one a roofed circular platform on which sits another of those big electric basses. I consider giving it a try – that could be fun. But it occurs to me that I’ve never produced frightening scenarios in lucid dreams before, and I should try it at least once.

Surrounded by demons is the first thing that occurs to me for some reason. That’ll do. I will them into being. As I focus on the intention, everything around me grows dark, swirling and immaterial. I’m floating, moving vaguely backwards. But nothing else seems to be happening. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll give that bass a try after all.

I let go of the intention. The original scene immediately returns, and I walk back towards the area I started out in. But not far from it, by a ridge in front of a forested area, I spot a strange figure. Its head looks like a skull, bovine in shape, with horns that curl around to the front and knot around each other, and it’s wearing a black and white herringbone tweed blazer with a thin purple scarf and a long grey-black skirt. It looks like I managed something, at least, although I can’t say it’s especially scary.

As I approach, it waves its hand, causing a small sphere of darkness to shoot towards me. This startles me a bit, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I keep walking towards it, ignoring its attacks. As I pass the pavilion, I notice the instrument sitting there looks different now. There are also now a number of cats up under the roof, lying in big cat piles that seem to extend upward into tunnels. They seem to just be waking up. The grey and orange tabbies stay where they are, but a few black cats stretch and jump down onto the stage.

As I turn back towards the figure, I see that it is now a cat as well – a small black one. I pick it up. It doesn’t look happy with being held, but it makes no attempt to escape.

At that point, I wake up.

9.1.20

I am in a small classroom in a university, but it’s not lecture I’m attending here: it’s a theatrical performance.

There are about a dozen of us in the audience, as well as three dogs, two of them large ones, which is almost enough to make the room crowded. Both the main actors are here already too, in the front of the room. It seems they’re performing “Faust”- or something Faust-ish, at any rate. Both the main characters are being played by women, the title role by Hélène Grimaud, although it’s not clear whether it’s actually the pianist or just a well-known actress who happens to have that name.

There’s also a woman in the back who seems to be involved in some official capacity. She’s the one responsible for checking tickets—at least theoretically. I’m hoping that remains theoretical since I don’t actually have a ticket. The prevailing system here seems to work like train tickets, where the ticket is good for a certain range of dates. While I do have one on hand, it’s good for three weeks in November, and it’s still October now.

She begins by giving a short speech, which she records using a small camera. Predictably, the smaller dog, which is hers, sticks its face directly in it at one point. Things come to a halt for a bit as the audience makes a fuss over all the dogs and encourages her to get them on film. But eventually, the performance itself gets underway.

For a while, it’s just the two leads talking, but very clever dialogue. At one point, the Mephistopheles(-ish) character begins asking for members of the audience to volunteer. And, as people begin to get more comfortable, they begin to participate more. Soon—what with the intimate space and the lack of separation between us and the performers— it’s as if we’re a part of the performance rather than just observing it.

I look out the (partially frosted glass?) wall at a man walking by—he probably thinks this is a rather odd lesson, given that it’s probably not obvious at first glance that it’s a performance. But actually, he seems to be part of the performance as well. He enters the room, placing some notes and a glass with some white wine in it on a lectern, and beings to talk about philosophy.

One of the audience members comments on the wineglass. The newcomer enters into a hilarious dialogue with them, still in a philosophical vein, all in a complete deadpan. I recall him claiming that he wasn’t the same person he was a couple of drinks ago. Another half-dozen people seem to have joined the audience at some point, which is more than enough to make the room crowded. At some point, I wake up.

After writing everything down, I fall asleep again and find myself in a continuation of the dream. I seem to have watched the rest of the performance, as well as the lecture taking place in the room afterwards—apparently a Marxist interpretation of diabetes, which I’ve stayed to listen to out of a combination of morbid curiosity and a lack of anywhere better to be. But I have a class I need to get to soon, and I want to get some coffee first, so I gather my stuff together and cut out early.

Once outside, it occurs to me that I don’t actually know where this class is going to be held. I find my notebook in my messenger bag and look through it, but it only looks like I’ve got last semester’s schedule written here—not this one’s. But I do recall receiving an email from somebody mentioning the class’s location, so I can check on that—but it will have to be on my laptop, since I can’t access that particular account on my phone.

My room isn’t far from here—it’s in a large building just down the street. I enter and make my way up to my room. It’s a tiny room, and unlike anywhere I’ve actually lived, but it all seems familiar and somehow pleasant. I put what seems to be my cast-iron shrine teapot on a hotplate on the top of a small, precarious-looking shelf to one side of my desk to boil water for coffee and sit down to find the email.

According to the email, the class is taking place at St. John’s Observatory—so not on campus, then, since I would have seen it if it were. I pull up a map website to find out where it is. To my own amusement, I initially mistype "Kassel"—the place I have apparently decided I am—as "Kessel" (kettle, that is).

Based on the pictures my search has turned up, the place I’m going to is a greenhouse as well as an observatory: it’s a small building with mostly glass walls, through which greenery can be seen. I’m not sure where it is relative to me just yet, though, and it’s now 17:00, when the class was supposed to begin. Maybe that won’t matter so much on the first day? But then it occurs to me: I’m in Germany. Akademisches Viertel. That means I still have time to get there.