DarkestDarkness

20th June 2021

Fragment:

Outside, walking through a town area of some kind, it's mostly flat, maybe with some downwards incline. I'm with someone I know closely, maybe J or L. There's something about a lan party of some kind. Walking through the town, maybe food or fast food is mentioned. There are eight of us in total? I am carrying a laptop around in one of the laptop bags we have here at home in waking life. In the dream, I am aware of my laptop being inferior to everyone else's.

Something about eating beans? There's some kind of sauce, maybe chilli, but no rice. There's a familiar taste.

While reading the exercise on p.78 of Dream Gates:

I'm sitting down and reading this exercise thinking about desert, then beach and then home. From the windows of many of the flats people are banging pots and pans, my awareness or focus on this quickly fades and then I'm focusing on the cars parked around the cul-de-sac, which are warm to the touch from the sun, but there is a morning light so actually most were in shade. Suddenly S appears, her lead is in my hand and she licks my face; I lick her back for good measure because I always feel she needs to have perspective of how it feels. She reels a little as she would.

Then she starts pulling hard on the lead, barking or growling at some passer-by and making me trip over and fall to the floor, vaguely feeling myself being dragged along but without any of the friction I'd expect. She makes her way to the hills behind the garages, it looks as it did after the shanties were removed but before the supermarket built. The scene changes to be next to the eucalyptus on that hill. Then, I have a vague intent.

It changes to unfinished highway that would be visible from the hill. I'm under the unfinished underpass of a concrete bridge. I know there's a door to my left but I cannot turn or see it from my point of view. I feel it's a metal door, painted a deep blue, maybe a little rusty. Like ones I've seen somewhere before in my childhood.

I sort of unintentionally break away from this and then just continue reading a bit more and then write some notes down for this.

---

Notes:

- Although the exercise asks for thinking of natural places and afterwards I found that my old home felt natural enough, because there's vegetation and bush in several parts and the building of where I used to live has always been pretty much on the edge of town, so nature of some kind has never been very far.

- The visualisation came about mostly unintentionally but it was pleasant, especially because although I couldn't see S very well, I appreciated the fact that she was there as some kind of animal guide. I was always told by mom that black dogs are considered luck charms in certain cultures, so I suppose that was present in my mind on some level. Thinking about it now, S appeared very well and despite vague visuals, she seemed just as I have always known her.

- The concrete underpass was shady and the unknown door could be a such a figurative entrance to the underworld and so on as the exercise suggests, even though the door might not lead down, it would go through earth.

26th May 2021

Fragment:

I'm playing my dwarf paladin. I'm in a dark and gloomy world, not quite like the game and not like waking life. This area is like a volcanic area, but mostly ash. It rains and I feel wet, it's a heavy drizzle. I meet other WoW players, at one point another paladin like mine and on inspecting his gear I see he has an impossible five thousand healing power, but I'm just amazed by it. I take a screenshot to show HW later. I wander off in some direction, with some sub-conscious purpose.

Later on in a different place I meet some furries, apparently some friends of H's friend M who is also in the dream in some way. Other ones are random M/M and I meet these in a city of some sort and as I recall dream reality gets a bit wonky here (phasing, incorrect perspective perceptions, etc). This is the brightest part of the dream as I recall it. I feel I'm just myself at this point, not any other specific character or form.

Some other bit is dystopic, again very gloomy, cold atmosphere. There's a building, I'm inside. It looks basic, large tiles for floor, concrete walls, possibly barred or broken windows. It has several floors, maybe three, with a central stairwell or something? I am with a group of people, possibly one person from waking life. A man enters the building at some point and he tries to murder someone in front of all of us, using some kind of crude slingbow thing that can throw anything at high velocity. The man is white, tall (more than one might expect) and slender, dark haired (a deep black) and slightly hunched. I see through his eyes and feel what he feels at some point, the sling thing feeling quite rubberband-like; he fails at every attempt, becoming visibly frustrated and being laughed away by the rest of us. He was trying to murder someone specific in the midst of us, also a man I think.

---

Notes:

- The dream was incredibly long but I couldn't maintain recall for long enough after making myself more awake.

- My initial thoughts are that this entire dreamworld reflects in some way how I look at the world sometimes in waking life. There was little order, it was anarchic and dystopic. Much of it was grey and desaturated. The middle part of the dream was probably the brightest and most colourful, but still it wasn't quite so much and there was an element of lacking order.

- There was a pervasively blue/cold light to most of the dream. It was only during the M/M section that there was some kind of bright sunrise in the distance.

- My paladin character is likely just a reflection of waking life but it does make a strong contrast to the otherwise desaturated and lifeless setting of the dream.

- The tall man is probably some shadow aspect. A murder of distance, to my mind, is immediately associated with fear of contact and fear of personal involvement.

23rd April 2021

Fragment:

I'm in a city, with H or maybe a friend, possibly a dream character. It's built out of full-sized cathedrals which in turn also basically make up a lot of the surrounding landscape. Either way, I'm on a public footpath of some kind and with a non-conscious impression of being somewhere quite high up. There are many other people around, I remember seeing people going in either direction with backpacks on.

The public path is built on top and as part of some cathedrals' rooves, which are partially flat. These bits have sections of tempered and thick (more than an inch) stained glass that allow pedestrians to walk over them and see inside the cathedrals that are below them.

(recall gap)

Something about a police investigation? I'm helping investigating or something.

(gap)

A concrete room underground. Related to sewers or some similar water processing facility? It's wet and there's some very deep water, which I can't see into very well but I'm not trying to look. There are platforms, this room has a feel of being like some kind of puzzle or challenge room.

At some point, I'm now in the water. In the water, there are dozens or perhaps hundreds of undead and rotting rabbits. Their fur is green and patchy. The visible flesh is a pale violet or purple. The ones that have eyes, possibly glow. The undead rabbits swim mindlessly at the surface of the water. The water does not look unclean, despite their presence. In fact, it's kind of clear, even if I can't see very far into it.

The room has a cold and dim light or ambience.

---

Notes:

Spoiler for Notes spoilered to keep DJ entry less lengthy:

- It's curious that rabbits are the second rodents to recently appear in my dreams. The first were rats in a semi-recent dream and they too were filthy or unclean in some sense of the words. Until I wrote this DJ entry out, I had entirely forgotten that rabbits are rodents.
-- They looked like the rabbits in places from WoW like the Tirisfal Glades and the Plaguelands.
-- I have always found a certain appeal to those zones in the game, they feel peaceful to me despite their gloomy and sickly ambience. Typing this out makes me realise that it's probably a bit unusual.

- On reading one of the books I have about dream symbology (I like to do so for interpretative inspiration sometimes), one thing noted about rabbits is that town people may mistake rabbits for hares and vice versa in dreams. Thinking about the dream, my instinct is to refer to them as rabbits, but in fact, they must have been hares based on their sizes as they were certainly not bunny sized. This makes some sense under that, as I have always been mostly a town dweller and even while awake, if I see a hare I'll likely think "rabbit!" before I think "hare" verbally.

- The undead in general have never frequently appeared in my dreams. I can't really recall many instances where there is undeath in some sense. I have never felt a particular fear of the undead despite my religious background and despite being aware that there are some things "similar" to undeath, but not in the traditional mythical sense.

- All of the things from this dream felt very desaturated, pale.

- There are a lot of stereotypical "underworld" symbols appearing in my dreams recently, I feel. It wouldn't be the first time but it may feel more pronounced lately since I'm establishing casual links between them. Perhaps some kind of subconscious world-building.

- The city made out of cathedrals was magnificent. The stained glass in the pathways was plain but made for a beautiful patterning effect. The whole area had a feel very much alike environments from Dark Souls, but more modern and casual and taken for granted in the dream as part of day-to-day existence, perhaps in the same way that I may take houses, office buildings and skyscrapers for granted in waking life.

Just a dream fragment. Recall was a bit poor this past night and the night before, maybe because I've been a bit restless.

---

Dream Fragment:

I'm at an alternate version of the big square in my old home town. An older version of it, I think? I got in a car with one of my aunts (B). It was dark. We drove somewhere underground, where it was also particularly dark but there were a few lights here and there at foot level or something. There was a green hue to everything.

The underground area was like a tunnel at first, a bit like some of the subway tunnels in the town. But then it became narrower and more like a sewer of some kind.

Then I remember being on foot on my own. There were narrow concrete straits over darkness below. There was green-ish looking water coming out of cylindrical openings in some of the concrete walls.

---

Notes:

- Although I didn't realise it on waking up or during the dream, it made sense that the underground area resembled the subway tunnels, because under that square in waking life is where the station is.
- I remember having some conversation with my aunt, but can't even remember what about.

Some dream fragments. There was a third one but I have such a faint and vague memory of it, not even sure where I'd start. I practically lost the other ones while getting up but made sure to keep my eyes closed as much as possible until I could write here, which helped.

---

Dream Fragment:

I remember being at some sort of concrete structure. I'm not sure if I was "me" but a couple of other people were here too, I think one of them was that Torres guy from NCIS. This place was dark and there was a massive abyss right in front of us. Across this abyss was another flat area made of concrete and there were some soldiers there. They were holding us here or something and they shouted that we should stay put.

The soldiers got on a platform and it started moving down very fast. They disappeared from sight. Somewhere down there was some light, but it must have been a literal mile or more away. Then some more soldiers appeared but this time they didn't wait for the platform and just jumped down where the platform shaft area was. I was intrigued but at some point in the dream I simply "knew" that at the bottom was a special fluid that would break any fall, no matter from how high.

Torres like the idea of just jumping across and into that specific area. I felt it was too risky. It was a long way down and there was no way to aim ourselves properly and the gap between the two concrete areas was quite wide. But he got on some sort of pole hanging from our side and got closer to the other side, hanging just over the middle. Then some soldiers came back up on the platform and noticed. They started shouting at him and warning him to stop. He ignored them and now he grabbed onto some rope that was hanging from the ceiling. That's as much as I remember clearly for this fragment.

I do remember there were no light sources. We were very deep underground most certainly, but somehow we had a light radius of our own, like in RPGs where the characters just give off light...

Dream Fragment:

I don't remember how I got there but I arrived at a small lab/office place. This dream was somewhat vivid, more than the other one. There were two researchers, wearing labcoats, and one of them greeted me. He seemed a bit uninterested at first but then he saw my boots. They were covered in some sort of pale golden sand. I realised I hadn't noticed this myself until that moment and he became very interested. He went over to a counter and showed me some tins with rounded caps.

The caps were all a shade of gold or tan. He asked me to see which one I thought was closest. I selected four of the tins first just as a guess. Then I held them and made their coloured cap be over my right boot in my vision. The first wasn't it, too orange. The second and third one seemed similar, the fourth one was too dark but the right hue. I compared between the second and third against the sand and decided the third one was the closest. He seemed happy with this and I felt somewhat happy to help. I made a comment saying "well at least I can definitely tell that my skill at recognising shades correctly has improved". I genuinely felt this was true in that moment and realise now that it was indeed a very accurate test of my skill in this.

The other researcher was just doing something on his own over on another counter but I don't remember what. Oddly enough, despite looking at my feet, can't be certain what the floor was like. Some sort of plastic tiles? Maybe wood. But square shapes. The counters were an off white on the top and a light stained wood on the cabinets. There were a couple of windows to the outside and I made note of the fact that it was daytime outside, but the room was quite brightly lit anyway with some fluorescent lamps that actually gave off a warm colour for once.

This whole dream bit felt like it was in sequence of the previous one or another one between them.

---

Side notes:

- It could possibly be the first time while dreaming where I had to use a skill that I'd use for painting in waking life. For me this is a particularly good sign because for a long time I've wanted that context to come over into dreams in some form.
- The researchers wearing labcoats were clearly dreamsigns that I missed. The labcoat is a dreamsign I successfully managed to insert into my dreams as a dreamsign a while back, I think last year or the year before.
- The dust on my boots reminded me very much of gold powder in the dream. In the dream I had a much clearer notion of where I had been previously, which was relevant for that context.
- Despite looking at my boots and remembering them very clearly as the black leather army-type boots I have in waking life, I only vaguely remember my trousers and can't really say which ones they were. It seems odd that my boots are the only detail I remember clearly from looking down, despite the fact that in the dream everything was the same level of vividness.
- I do remember I was wearing some sort of dark hoodie in that dream. I remember it because I remember the sensation of having the sleeves pulled up, something I often do if I'm indoors.
- Don't have much at all to make note of from the first dream since many details are vague now, but the fall-breaking fluid definitely made me think of stuff from Portal and from Satisfactory.

Non-dream stuff - Woke up between 8 and 9, few details recalled of some non-lucid fragments, but some of those also lost due to writing this much later.

---

Fragment 1
Was in a spaceship of some kind, remembering traveling through a star system that had a gas giant planet that had a smaller planet lodged on its surface; I remember approaching the smaller planet and entering a blue sky atmosphere and I remember feeling both forces of ascent and descent, but always going very close to a horizontal parallel, so the forces weren't that strong.

Fragment 2
Some sort of transition with the first fragment where I was a giant and going through a city. Few details remembered now but I distinctly remember feeling like the perspective wasn't quite accurate (the field of view seemed too small).

Fragment 3
Doing something "naughty" with my partner, in a large concrete room; there was a bulb hanging from the ceiling, tungsten. There were a couple of computers that we weren't supposed to be using or something. The room had a door but it was more like a barred door, so it could be seen through. I remember feeling like somebody could intrude at any point.

---

Some notes:

• The first dream (fragment) has probably originated from recently playing Homeworld again a bit. Another game I used to play from the same era was Freelancer, which was another space game. Often, using a system editor in Freelancer meant you could do weird things like the two planets in this dream fragment.
• Though normally I would consider the second fragment to be a possible dream goal (like for the October competition by KarlaB18), I do not consider it detailed enough to actually have achieved that goal. The fact that it occurred is a positive for me because I rarely dream of subjects I'm very interested in or want to have fun with.

---

Scoring thus far:
+ Previous score: 3.5

+ This DJ entry score (breakdown below): 6.5
++ Recall any non-lucid dream over 3 consecutive nights: 3.0
++ Recall a non-lucid fragment: 0.5 * 3 = 1.5
++ Fly (1st fragment): 1.0
++ Transform/Shapeshift (2nd fragment): 1.0

= Total score thus far: 10.0