DarkestDarkness

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)

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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.

Not been able to keep recall very well or make notes in the morning for the last few days because of pain issues.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was at some sort of zen gathering, for a dream-imagined relative. She was going to have this ceremony that was supposed to strengthen the bond between her and this baby brother of hers or something.

I remember the area was on a green and grassy rolling hill. It had a fair bit of an angle on it. There were some small trees, not much bigger than a person and there were some sort of carpets or rugs laid out in a few places.

It was night time? But it was bright, I think from a full moon. I remember looking at the sky and seeing it in the night and then lower to the right I saw a tower. It looked like a Japanese hill castle tower.

There were some people up there on its walls, some kind of avians, like from Starbound.

Next thing I remember, I’m up there and planning a sneak attack with some other people against the avians to take some treasure they had up there.

Transition? Maybe a different dream but it felt to be in sequence and similar context.

I remember L and his childhood friend J. We were walking around a lower area, possibly next to that hill from before. It was night. We came up to some metal grated stone structure. Beyond the metal bars I could see a wooden treasure chest and a tunnel that led into that area.

I looked to the left and saw another similar stone structure, also with metal bars but not all along it’s opening. There were two minotaurs in there and I attacked them but I don’t remember how I dealt with them exactly.

The rest of the details are missing but I vaguely remember being in a 3 seat van with J and L at some point.

Dream Fragment:

I was using my tablet. I was painting, trying to replicate an effect I saw in waking life of a painting that was just in the background of a tv show.

I was trying to paint waves in the water in the same detailed way as that painting. It wasn’t going very well though and even in the dream I realised I was going about it the wrong way.

---

No notes for now, might edit later.

Some fragments from last night.

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Fragment:

I was in some kind of starship, not unlike one from Star Trek but there was a mixed feel from several space stuff, including a bit from Starpoint Gemini. I was captaining the ship and we were headed straight for a blue-ish planet, covered mostly by water than anything else. I could see the system's star just left of where the planet was, much further away.

Some four or five other green-coloured ships appeared, intercepting and following us closely. I suggested to an officer to simply activate the cloaking device ability and could see in a third-person view from outside the ship as the field enveloped it and the other ships disbanded in separate directions. (Expectable AI behaviour if it were a game)

As we got very close to the planet, I could see everything in a sort of cinematic view and then the ship started getting close to the ground to land somewhere but for whatever reason it had to be at an airport, so the ship kept making really wide loops closing in and away from the planet surface.

Every time we got close, I could see on some disembodied interface some information about the local surface structures. I did see a fair few airports, but many of which had tractors lining up vegetables in the runways. This annoyed me slightly.

There is a transition and I am now on my own at some sort of Japanese-looking castle. It's night-time but I can see the moon and everything looks bright and blue-ish. There are some sort of holographic security features. (This part of the dream vaguely reminded me of Starbound)

Fragment:

Just a small part of some other dream, I was in a town with some friends, not sure who. We just came out of a restaurant that was closing for the night and then two of us went one way, and I wondered where the third member was. I asked my friend, who only vaguely suggested the other might have gone looking for something.

I remember wandering streets, there was a lot of light, from glowing signs and lampposts. I could see people sitting at cafes and so on.

At some point we went into some shop and I wondered again about the missing friend. The friend that was with me was fascinated and excited by rediscovering some sort of cardboard packed plastic ketchup sachets.

The next bit I remember, stuck in some sort of traffic at a four-way junction, with three lanes on each direction.

---

Side notes:

• The first dream was a bit more unusual as I haven't had many dreams that take place in space, even though I've played a lot of games that do.
• The view-point changes were sort of frequent in the space dream and they felt a bit like they were made through a keyboard I couldn't quite feel. I suppose this sensation is quite similar to when I'm actually playing or writing something, where the keyboard sort of just becomes an extension of awareness, rather than existing as a physical obstacle, in a sense.
• Most of these dream fragments I am getting lately are written quite a lot later from when I had the dreams, so it's a sign that recall is improving somewhat and I am also noticing more pre-lucid thoughts at a sort of "gut feeling" level, where I am not expressly thinking in spoken words but rather getting feelings or intuition about the dreams' content.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at about 10:45, remembering mainly one non-lucid dream.

---

Dream sequence:
The first part I can remember is in an underground tunnel, with a road. It was dark and there were old sodium-type lights, the orange streetlight kind of lamps. There was also this area that joined with the tunnel.

There were no cars and I went through the joined area and there was a man; I stabbed him in the back and continued on forward, running I think.

Then my "view" changed, from the same height as him, I could see the man lying face down on the ground, with a lot of blood under him, and with his face in a state of surprise and shock, eyes opened. But then he got up. Now he was naked, and he had tattoos, he also had a 9mm type pistol and he was scared and paced backwards toward an elevator. My view followed in front of him as he got into the elevator.

Inside it was mostly chrome/steel, maybe with one mirror. It was very bright inside the elevator and the man was still shaking; he made it go up, I think. My point of view changed to be behind him, as the lift arrived.

There were some bodyguard types in a dark room and he asked them for help, they were like his henchmen; I can't remember what happened here exactly but then he walked into that room and then another, and the other guys were gone again. And in the other room was me, and the man was surprised to see me. He got a katana from somewhere and tried to cut my head off, and succeeded, but only for my dream self to disappear and another to reappear in the same place, taunting him. I explained to him, this was his dream, and he could not get rid of me (which doesn't make sense 100% and also I failed to realise it was a dream... )

He kept trying to cut my head off, the same thing happening repeatedly, and he was obviously getting frustrated.

Then the dark room was not a room at all anymore; we were outdoors in a japanese-style house garden and it was day, with a few clouds. He still had his katana but I was at a distance now, and I had a weapon now too, either a katana or a naginata. I rushed to attack him with confidence and he struggled to predict my moves.

I can't really seem to remember the ending.

---

Notes:

• I don't really know who the man was, but I remember his role was that of a criminal leader or something. He had long black hair, but I do not remember his clothes, when he had them.
• The elevator is a common recurring dream-sign, though it usually involves me rather than someone else.
• As far as I can remember, most of the setting was dream-generated.
• I spoke to the man about the nature of the dream, his dream, even. But then I didn't realise the nature of my own dream; it is as though I was a dream character to this dream character man of mine.
• I did not feel pain from the beheading but perhaps remember feeling a slight pressure from the blade initially.

Non-dream stuff: Got up at about 9:30 and then had to help my partner for a while so I've forgotten most details but held on loosely to a few non-lucid fragments.

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Fragment 1:

I remember having an A4 notebook, the paragraphs lines were red and the edge guides were another colour, probably blue. In the dream this was a dream journal, though at least a few of the pages were torn, as if they had been bitten off, by a big animal, I though. I still tried to write on a torn page, either with a pencil or a pen. There were still good and intact pages, but for some reason I did not choose to try to write on them.

Fragment 2:

I was on a low tier of a canal or something, but not in the water bit. There was one of those tall concrete bridges across to a higher tier on the other side. Where I was, there were some chunky metal fences, one was crumpled and the others were stacked against each other. In the dream they were relevant to the dream's context, though I don't remember how.

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Some notes:

• The dream dream-journal was not like any DJ I've ever kept in real life. This journal I'm writing on now is digital, as was the last one I had. The physical journals I had were not books, but loose collections of blank A4 sheets that I wrote on.
• I really can't remember if I had a pencil or a pen when trying to write, but I know that it felt odd either way when I pressed on the paper. The feedback was not as I expected. This, and the fact that there was such a unique (and oddly torn) dream journal should have been a good prompt to do a RC, as I've just done now, thinking about whether I should do RCs when writing on DJs or not.
• The second fragment's area looked like typical city/town scenes I've seen from Japan, though I've never been there. I've recently been playing a game with such typical towns.
• The fact that I was somewhere so foreign should have been a good RC prompt, but in the dream I did not think about why or how I was there.
• Both fragments were linked together by some sort of plot/story, but I don't remember any detail.