DarkestDarkness

Some small in-line notes and such.


2022 June 13th

Quick note to self, this was also the date of the appointment.

Fragment:

(left recall too late)

I'm in a mountain town or such. It's sunny, mostly clear. At some point my friend K calls me, but I think I miss her call.

Later in the dream, something about water. Not as sunny now? I think I speak to K on the phone now, but it's like I'm also next to her too? (vague recall) She tells me that she wanted to invite me to a party before, and I apologise for missing the party. She then tells me that her dog G has died. I say that I'm sorry to hear it, and I hear her voice breaking a bit and I feel myself close to crying too, knowing very well what her pain will be like. We talk about something else for a bit.


2022 June 15th

Fragment:

I'm in a street, I have a dog with me. She looks like S but has worse behaviour and at one point "play" bites me, a bit too hard on the left wrist. I look for a wound but don't notice any, and then I think about how it actually didn't hurt all that much.

(gap)

Someone else was present in the dream up to this point, though now I think I'm on my own with the dog again, at a place that is supposed to be like a veterinary practise. A vet person gives the dog an injection. After about ten seconds, the dog is numb and she can't really move at all. I pick her up and put her on a conveyor belt thing. There's a dark atmosphere/mood. The dog is here to be put down. I feel sad, and also think that it's a shame she couldn't have had better behaviour.

(there had been more context to the situation but these were the bits of recall I lost in the gap)


2022 June 16th

Scraps (DFLN):

Many dreams. Only recall one dream where I was in a dark room with zombies. They seemed slightly aggressive, but not entirely.

(Although I was playing 7d2d at the time, I also became ill with Covid after this)

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.

18th May 2021

Fragment:

Contextually I'm in some kind of alternate reality. In a basement or garage of some kind? But there's a feeling it's older. The ceiling is concrete and orderly and only slightly taller than I am. The ground is uneven and natural in some sense. It's dark. My dog is here with me at some point, but I'm distracted by something else?

I was previously outside. A red-ish place, sandstone like. Reminds me now of stereotypical Mars depictions. It's sandy and the sky is a desaturated colour. I remember several interactions with dream characters, but only so vaguely. A man? Something about not belonging here perhaps.

Notes:

- I remember that last night I tried to think about several things relating to dreaming. I tried thinking about the lucid dreaming party that I never managed to successfully incubate, I thought about Occipitalred's thoughts on dream awareness in a traditional "non-lucid" state. I remember thinking about lucidity in general but I eventually became mentally distracted, lost focus, falling asleep at some point.

- Something about the outdoors place reminds me of Tomb Raider III level design, but only in very vague semblance.

27th January 2021:

Fragment:

Night time. Some part in a house. Mom and her friend MJ? Something taking S out for a walk. (recall gap) At the house door, I'm in bare feet. S is outside and a bit "on the loose". She's three times her normal size, making her bigger than a lion. Her body shape seems elongated?

From my position standing in the doorway, I see a German Shepherd approach with a man from the left and become concerned the dogs will fight. The GS first comes up to me and licks my face and generally wants attention. This part feels very vivid and real.

Then the dogs spot each other and get fighty. I am reluctant to go out with bare feet to deal with this but S just comes up to the GS and I then try and hold her by her collar, though her size is making it difficult.

(Think I woke up, it was early. I remember thinking I didn't want to bother writing notes yet and that I would try and simply recall the dream later. At this point I remember thinking about my switch in the way Occipitalred suggested. I remember the positions accurately and feel them mentally, toggling it a couple of times there.)

Semi-Lucid Fragment:

I'm outdoors somewhere? Night time still. I remember old school mates and friends. MB is here too. Me and my friends get into a sort of pretend game with real guns, fighting each other. I see an RPG launcher and grab it, everyone becomes afraid of me, except MB, kind of. I shoot a few rockets at him, they sort of just bounce off instead of exploding but they hurt him anyway. I try to really kill him, as I remember on some level what he represents.

Later I'm in some kind of office-like place with H and I remember we had been having fun and I'm naked and have fluids on me. But as I'm walking somewhere to get myself clean in the dark, I become semi-lucid. I simply know I'm dreaming and realise I don't need to do any such thing such as cleaning myself. I try to will the mess away but it doesn't happen and I conclude it doesn't matter. I step over on to desks and over cubicle separators and despite the darkness I feel I can move around easily. I feel a level of energy that I have rarely known in waking life, and notice no pain. But lucidity eventually fades.

(Recall is poor, I think because after this I continued dreaming and being asleep and the level of awareness dropped. I think this was kind of a WBTB but somewhat delayed. This dream felt like it was the start of being asleep again, anyway. My level of awareness and overall lucidity was somewhat poor.)

Fragment:

Something about a challenge involving putting on the one ring? Not sure if this was a dream or a thought while awake at some point. No clear visuals.

Dream:

A dentist's office of sorts, but seems built into a larger hospital. Doctor Cameron from "House" is here and she's here for an appointment. The dentist is a female of similar age and build, different hair and face.

They are discussing some sort of serious treatment option. Cameron has forgotten part of what had happened last time she was on the chair. The dentist then suggests letting Cameron hear the audio log.

Cameron is definitely distraught about what happened and the fact that she can't remember it at all. The dentist says that she can hear the tape when they both go over to Cameron's friends' place, which is implied by context of tapes and something else that it will be mine/H's place. Cameron tells her that she's gay and implies she'd like to hook up with her before coming over to our place or something.

21st January 2021

Dream:

(not the earliest point I can recall in the dream)

I'm in a dark and sooty room at the apex of a pyramid. I don't remember seeing the outside, I just have this knowledge intuitively. There's also a bottomless square pit. The soot is dark brown and seems to have an increased build up the further up it is on the inner apex. I don't know how I'm able to see, there's no light source but things look just bright enough.

There's some kind of machine near the middle of the room. By the looks of it, it should be fixed down to the ground but it isn't. It has a main moving part, a piston or pushrod of some kind. It jerks around out of control indefinitely. I think something but the recall is gone.

The scene changes a bit and a white lady with light curly hair appears? She starts speaking like she's in a documentary, she mentions the machine but then there is a focus on a puppy that appears in the room. The puppy is an integral part of the room, I feel or she explains, and an integral part of whatever purpose the machine is supposed to serve.

She explains that someone has to come and feed the puppy every day, but that otherwise it must always remain her. I touch the dog, it's a gold labrador at first? I say something aloud about it being unfair for the dog, or something.

(recall gap)

In a Japanese town, but it just looks like any town in Britain or the USA, it has more "room" like the latter. I think to myself it's odd that it's a Japanese town. All the people I see around are distant from me and I can't tell what their ethnicity actually is, making me suspect it's not really a Japanese town. But I don't investigate my suspicions further, some kind of dream plot drags me around the town; I'm being chased, or someone else is, and I'm following.

A man, he was being chased. We arrive at a house that's also a restaurant or inn. A pub, effectively? There's a flagpole outside on the garden, I notice the ground is covered in snow. For some reason I fear this man is going to defecate on his own snowy lawn. He doesn't. The flag flying on that pole is one like that for India, I notice. Three horizontal stripes, top to bottom; green, white, red or orange. With a stylised black sun in the middle.

The man invites me inside. Seemingly the chase is up.

(recall gap)

I'm shown some kind of machine. H is with me. The man leaves for a while; he said he'd like us to fix this machine for him. It looks like it's bare, i.e. no aesthetic coverings, etc.

It has some kind of plastic platters. Looks like many random bits off CD players, tape machines, etc. But the size of the parts is different from what it would be in those machines. H tries to adjust something and the large top platters ping off towards the back left side. We are annoyed, but conclude it probably helps us anyway.

(rest of recall is too vague)

---

Notes:

- The machine at the pyramid's apex looked like it was some random thing cobbled together from different bits of wood and maybe some metal. It looked very crude and it was equally crude in behaviour.

- This pyramid's apex felt almost like the mix between a loft and the inside of a regularly used chimney.
-- The room and its contents felt like they had some strong symbolic associations. Could be an interesting place to try doing some dreamwork.

- When I questioned the town's Japanese-ness, my awareness of the dream overall increased but I was instinctively taken by the dream plot before I could really think about it further. I realise now I could have thought about it further while running but I didn't.

7th July 2020

Dream (somewhat fragmented):

Some mix of walking and racing around a city. There was a long track that lapped at a military train station of some kind and looped around through a somewhat futuristic city and some mountains and sea side cliffs. I think I lapped around a couple of times at least. The track was a mix of dirt and train tracks along the non-city parts, so the car would transform or something as it went on and off the rail tracks. The moments during which I was driving were all in third person view.

(recall gap)

At some point I was driving a tank past the check point where the race track supposedly lapped, somewhere in the city. A group of rebels appeared and melded out from the cheering crowds gathered around the city race track. The group of people had guns and they clung to me and demanded "the truth" (not of me, it was their chant?). I was not their ally but not their enemy either. I carried on moving forward and some point I'm me and not in the tank anymore, and I'm going through this cramped and small hall of a sci-fi, neon-lit mall. It's kind of dark but the neon signs made a stark contrast.

(at some point there's a transition, maybe not instant but gradual, though my recall of it has faded)

The rather large group of rebels was much smaller now. I was now in a giant cavern and this much smaller (less than ten people in total) group of rebels and their children had been following me for a while now after what I think had been quite some time walking; some of the kids kept holding on to me (in fear?) or clinging but I found this annoying at times since I was trying to move forward.

In the huge cave there was this giant reptilian alien creature and it was fighting or attacking something. I remember running past its large open mouth and throwing a small nuclear bomb inside. Somehow I made it keep its mouth closed as I moved towards its tail.

The bomb went off at this point and the light shone right through the scaly skin; there was a certain iridescence to the effect and there were plenty of vivid colour. Because I was at the back at this point, I remember making note that it was a female (based on the genitals) and the creature began to feel weak and was sort of hanging on its knees.

Then I remember being the same size as it; I sort of rolled it over on its back and then it was a (friendly) dog. I was trying to be careful because some of those people were still nearby and now they were tiny. I gave the dog some kind of pill like a tranquillising medicine, without too much resistance; the giant dog began to look a bit out of it and happy. Then there was some kind of interface to choose how to reset or reprogram the creature's behaviour. There were two columns with a few options each.

The dream ended shortly after this.

---

Notes:
- Even only after waking up I thought that the general setting of this dream was very interesting. The sci-fi type city and the scenic landscapes are generally appealing and come to think of it, are both subjects I'd like to be better at portraying artistically.
-- I remember some picturesque sunset views at some point, around the seaside cliff areas.
- This was one of those dreams that felt quite long, where I feel there are many parts of the dream that I did experience but simply could not recall solidly once awake.
- The whole thing with the rebels and the city makes me think of the Hunger Games for some reason, though I don't think I'd rewatched it recently at the time of this dream.
-- I don't remember clearly anymore what was the general emotional state of the rebels and their children when we were in the cave, but my mind says "fear" at the moment; but the way the children were hanging on to me was more playful, in the same way that as when I was a child I might have done when being playful with my parents.
- The nuclear bomb and the shiny effect were probably in part brought on by playing Borderlands 3 and using a character skill that enables miniaturised nuclear warheads to be fired, and in part probably by Fallout and its Fatman too.
- Rolling over the creature (dog at that point) was very akin to my experience of having to give my dog medication, though in this case there was actually more willingness to receive the medication.

Non-dream stuff: Woke up at 8 but fell asleep again somehow, and the non-lucid dream fragment that follows was after I woke up suddenly at 9:40; I tried to not recall the dream too hard, with positive result:

---

Fragment:

Was going up a small 1-lane ramp at what reminds me now of a school I've been to in waking life. It was day and as I went up the ramp I was fiddling with a box cutter ^{(specifically a black and yellow one I have in waking life)} and there was a boy, maybe 10 or 12 in front of me walking the same direction. The light was suddenly changing as I caught up to him and it became night; there were trees and fences to the right and at the immediate left some short buildings; I could see where the road would intersect ahead;

I said something like "hey, wait up", at first wondering if the sounds of the box cutter scared him, but he didn't seem phased by that. I remember he looked at me and smiled and I asked him "where's your brother? do you know?". The boy said "no, I don't know", and I kept walking along with him and we talked about something; we were getting to an intersection with a town road and suddenly he had a dog on a lead, I'm not sure what kind, but not small and with brown/light brown fur.

When we got to the intersection, the dog started tugging harder and went to the left and then suddenly it was like they were gone and I walked in the same direction as they'd vanished; I seem to remember that now I had the dog for a few minutes and it was very playful and tugging all the time on the lead ^{(reminds me of my own dog in waking life, though it didn't feel like my dog)} and I remember thinking something about the dog playing with a policeman but then the dog was gone again and as I went down the road, over a bend, I saw that some 3 story apartment buildings were damaged;

I started walking toward them instead and then I remember one of them was quite damaged, like from an explosion, but it almost looked like they were made of very large Lego. I went into a building and the first and second floor were on fire and I kept walking through, up some stairs and then saw like an "interface" notification at the top of my field of view; I mentally clicked it, and the fires nearest me simply got put out; I repeated this a few times before the dream ended. (I was woken up by the already present garbage truck coming closer and getting just slightly louder, and my partner getting up to check on his car)

---

Some notes:

• The area was reminiscent of my native country. This should have been dream-sign especially considering the absence of normal context, like the absence of my partner and my aimless wandering. I was the age I am now.
• Other than me, the boy, the dog and the "imagined" policeman, there was nobody else in the entire dream sequence.
• I was walking the whole time. At first this may not seem notable and though I did not feel frightened by anything at any point (such as by the fires, I was indifferent to the situation). And even if I had been afraid, it's not likely I would have run, but instead would have walked faster. This is reminiscent of real-life behaviour where I very rarely run if I'm in a public place, as it makes me feel self-conscious and observed, though the notion was not "consciously" present in my mind at the time in the dream.
• I have the idea the dog may have been a golden retriever, but I have no clear picture in my mind.
• I don't know who the boy really was, I think dream-generated, especially as I'm struggling to think of what his face was like and instead remembering the face of a boy in a game I've recently played.
• I think that before the ramp the fragment starts with me going up, there was water and a pier or something, but I know it was related to the dream sequence that came before.