Recent DJ Posts

From a disembodied perspective, I'm watching my IRL self. He's looking for something in this room, currently looking at an illustration of Loki hanging on a wall. The disembodied version of me is curious about the IRL version of me, and I've set up this space in order to observe his reactions. There'd been some previous incident where he'd taken on a sort of ritualized trickster role and unintentionally drawn my interest; he's not aware of me. (Though trickster's not the word I would have used in the dream and it kind of irritates me to use it now, but it's the best way to put it - a sense of something in common between the Loki illustration, the devil statue, my disembodied perspective, and the role my IRL self had played.) I've just now come to the conclusion that the thing that originally grabbed my interest had to do with taking on different roles rather than something inherent to him. This doesn't make me any less curious, but it alters the situation. He's now looking at a small black and white sculpture of the devil, and I switch to his perspective while he's holding it.

As my IRL self, I'm interrupted by the arrival of several IRL people. Eventually I wind up standing over a large pot with one of the women, and she's stirring whatever's in it. She calls me by the wrong name, and I correct her, annoyed. She repeats my real name, and makes a promise involving it, talking about dire consequences for anyone who violates this promise. Afterwards she describes the pot as holding the curse she's just spoken.

Now that my extensive travels (Paris, Rome, Montreal, Montana) of this month have ended, and I'm back home and gradually returning to my normal sleep patterns, I find that dream awareness is stirring again, though so far it falls short of full lucidity. I had no trace of it while on my journeys, and I didn't even have any dreams I judged worth writing down. This was not overly disappointing because I was not actively engaged in any kind of dream practice and too busy to spend an hour updating my dream journal every day, so it felt okay to take a break.

A couple days ago I had a dream that was atmospheric but not very interesting plotwise, so I didn't write it down at the time. However, one detail is notable: there was a giant white USB cord on the ground, at least twenty feet long, and arbitrarily I found myself wondering if I could bring it to life. I focused my attention on it and sure enough, it raised its "head" (the USB plug) and began to slither and writhe like a snake. This gave me an eerie sensation, because I found myself thinking, "This better not be happening in real life!" I decided I'd better check to see if I was dreaming. I levitated and was relieved to conclude that yes, indeed I was. However, true lucidity did not emerge because even though I now knew that I was dreaming, I did not stop and think what I could do with the dream state but unreflectively continued to go along with the dream events, which largely involved trying to take a good photograph of a distant landscape. It was a classic case of awareness without agency.

Last night's dreaming included one of my classic dream signs, a public restroom of questionable functionality. Although I did not recognize the dream sign, I did find myself wondering if the facilities would be clean enough to use. Then I remembered, "I can keep them clean and functional by maintaining the right mental attitude." Though I fell short of actual dream awareness, I still recognized the causal link between my will and the surrounding environment.

I find it interesting that, though I have still not done any sort of LD practice since early in the month when I left on my travels, simply returning home and restoring my ordinary sleep schedule has been enough to reawaken the potential for dream awareness that felt very distant while I was on the road.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #2??: One Last Mission

I’m heading upstairs to change my lightbulbs, but arrive to find that we’ve got tons of people upstairs visiting while my father-in-law changes them for me. I feel embarrassed, as if it looks like I never take care of anything around the house. He even somehow installed light bulbs with little solar panels attached to them, which I’ve never even heard of!

I head downstairs, feeling inadequate. I see that we have a big video screen that greets people at the front door. I see that it’s programmed to show a big story about turncoat spies within some US government agency. It’s some kind of huge story and these traitors are all over the news. As I’m heading into the kitchen, thinking about this fancy video monitor and the fancy lightbulbs, I realize that this feels a whole lot like a dream.

My father-in-law joins me downstairs and I say, “Hey, [Father-in-law], I’ve got an even cooler way to change lightbulbs!” I gesture at one of the recess lights in the kitchen ceiling and with a couple quick hand gestures, pull it out, summon a new one, and place it into the socket. It lights up!

He looks amazed and asks me how I did that. “This is actually a lucid dream,” I admit. “You can really do anything here.” He nods in acknowledgement, still looking impressed.

I recall my conversation yesterday with Iokheira where we were talking about cool dream ideas that people had never, ever done. I chose one of the ones we had decided was awesome enough that we were going to try: werewolf skydiving! :canislucidus: I phase through an external, curtained door out onto a back patio.

There’s a long row of side-by-side deck chairs here, with lots of people lounging around and relaxing. I look at the woman closest to the wall, but no, this isn’t Iokheira . One chair over, though is a group of three women sitting together, and on the left is Iokheira ! She hops out of the chair and we hug.

“It’s great to see you!” I say.

“Great to see you too!” she says and then starts nodding as I’m about to say, “Do you remember what we’d planned to try in this dream?” I can tell that she already knows the plan is werewolf skydiving.

Iokheira throws on a pair of aviator sunglasses, grabs my hand, and strides forward. We walk through a large yard into some suburban streets. She says, “Dylan (??) and Romero tried to tell me that this is my last mission. We’ll see about that...” I get the idea that she’s some kind of spy or secret agent. “The agency’s in [turmoil? chaos?] right now.”

I’m strongly sensing a backstory where she’s an agent in some kind of secret government agency. I wonder if it’s some kind of special division for werewolves. We go past a bus stop to a grassy field, while she continues to explain some more of the backstory. I wonder whether there will be a cliff at the end of this field for a possible BASE jump! Before we get to anything like that, though, the dream ends.

This dream occurred at a place I worked during my college years. The job involved delivering fruits and donuts overnight to gas stations. The location of the dream was the dock where we would load the box trucks before starting the route.

I come in through the truck bay door. I know I have not been on the job in a few years, but I am eager to prove that I'm still the best driver around. I go looking for my clipboard of route papers, but instead find a black binder which seems to be in really nice condition. I think this is an improvement over the old system, and I toss the binder on top of my "store cart". *note: this is the cart I would use to wheel trays of donuts into the gas stations from the truck. We each had our own with our name on the top.*

I look at the pallet of banana boxes and I'm about to start picking the ones I take with me. Some of the boxes are open and only partially full with yellow, splotchy bananas. I knew these were left over from the night before. Other newer boxes were full with semi-green bananas. These are the ideal ones for sales because they last longer in the stores, but before I start picking my boxes, I see the head driver. He never liked me much because I worked to hard, but I somehow knew that he had covered my route the night before. Since he has a history of doing a poor job on my route, and loading only old bananas, I knew that I would need extra boxes to account for a lot of replacement tonight. I asked him how the bananas went last night and he just blew me off saying it was fine.

One of the other drivers shows up, and he's panicked. He's goes around asking everyone "Have you seen my black, 3-inch binder?" He comes to me and I say I haven't seen it. Then he points to the top of my store cart and asks, "What's that?" I pull down the binder and suddenly realize that his name is printed on the front. Embarrassed, I hand it to him. It occurs to me that we don't all have binders. He bought this one just to help on his route.

I'm ready to start loading my truck, but the head driver is already grumbling that I'm working too fast. Meanwhile, others are waiting on me to back my truck in since we can only load one at a time. I walk out to where the trucks are, but another truck is in the way so I know I won't be able to position mine. I walk back inside feeling the pressure of the others waiting on me.

All of a sudden I am in the rafters of the ceiling, peeking down at the others working. I know that they are talking about me and I am trying to eavesdrop. I hear the head driver griping about me going too fast and making him look bad. I specifically remember him saying "I don't get a 55 dollar salary to put up with this!" The alarm goes off and I wake up.

Much of this dream is very similar to how the job actually went. The head driver in the dream was the same one from my job. When I worked, I focused on efficiency. The head driver was the only salaried employee and would stick around to help the bakery boss after his route, so he was never in a hurry. The rest of us were paid for 8 hours per day, regardless of finishing the route early or late. It was in our best interest to finish early. By hustling in the stores and at the dock (but never on the road! ) I typically finished my route in 5 hours. The head driver, who didn't have a route of his own and covered us on our days off, took at least 8 hours on every route. Over time he started to resent me and he didn't hide it very well.

Morning of July 30, 2015. Thursday.



This recurring dream situation is not remotely symbolic in any way that I can tell and is mostly only literally based on real-life annoyances as well as environmental scripting (for example, light hammering and weed whackers very early in the morning). I had previously posted similar environmentally-scripted dreams, including the “inferior decorators” theme. This one is not quite as surreal and the noise was not quite as intrusive. As I have said, when there is environmental noise during sleep, I sometimes also dream of exploding credit cards, playing cards, and other smaller items that disappear in a bright flash, leaving me somewhat puzzled unless I am lucid and even then it causes a brief shift in in-dream perception.

In my dream, it seems to be the present, though we are living in a different (unfamiliar) residence. It seems like a large two-storey house. The room I am “sleeping in seems to be L-shaped and on the second floor. I am at the "foot” of the “L” back against an area where I do not expect the renovator to approach. He mostly remains in the “stem” of the “L” though I hold the sheet almost fully over me in case any paint flakes go flying in my direction. He has some sort of vacuum-cleaner-like machine he is carrying around (like a suitcase) and seemingly sucking up all the cracked and peeling paint that I guess is mostly on the ceiling in the “stem” area. However, at one later point, I look up and see that not only is there loose peeled paint everywhere, the wood of the ceiling itself seems to be fused into the paint and splintering down somewhat, though looking almost like plastic, yet the unintended “design” is very even and regular across the whole ceiling. This seems a bit odd, as I am fairly certain I heard him scraping the layer of paint off (as well as some sanding, I think, or vacuuming off any chipped paint) and assumed it would be fairly smooth by now. I get the brief impression that someone might actually try to paint the ceiling in this strange condition.

In another scene, my wife Zsuzsanna and I are embracing near a window on the second floor. A cherry picker is just outside and at least two men are staring into the window from perhaps ten feet away. (Strangely enough, this brings to mind a recently reviewed dream from all the way back to 1967, about forty-eight years ago - “Ferris Wheel at my Window” - which also has people using an unfair advantage to look in through my second-storey window). As I am noticing this, my wife somehow goes straight out the window and is suddenly on the ground below yelling at the work team (without being injured in any way, and in fact, not even seeming to climb out but just teleport or go through the wall and drop vertically and perfectly). I am slightly startled by this and then go to look for her.

From here, I go outside and I start yelling at any other male that may be within hearing range. A friendly male comes from around the corner of the house and asks me if I am talking to him but I say “no” so as not to hurt his feelings or alter his friendly nature.

I then go to some sort of warehouse-like building with no external walls (similar to the look of the unfinished house my wife lived in as a child). There is a lot of junk, which is probably related to the renovation work. Not much happens after this though I am thinking I will probably end up doing much of the painting myself.

I was in a house (my house?) and it's in bad need of repair. I can't remember any furniture on the main floor. I was sweeping up some debris on the floor and then I thought to myself, why is my floor concrete and not hardwood? There are cracks in the concrete and a big hole of rubble. I felt like something wasn't right. Then I wound up in the kitchen where the cabinets were all white. I had a can of paint on the floor, so I grabbed a brush and started painting the faces of the cabinets under the sink. It was the faintest green with a gold sheen (omg like the new pen that Megan at work got me!) and you could only really tell they were painted if you looked at them in a certain direction. I leave the kitchen and come back and my parents are there. I look around and all the cabinets are all brown wood now. I said "so what, I just go to sleep and wake up and now all the cabinets are different?!" (I think that my alarm had gone off and I snoozed it, so technically I woke up, then went back to sleep and then the cabinets were all different haha) All the cabinets were different except the ones I painted. My dad looked at them and I can't tell if he liked them or not.

Then I went upstairs and there was a little boy in a bedroom, and I told him he was lucky that his bedroom is so big. I looked in his closet and it looked like a clothing store with tons of shirts folded up all nice and neat, but multiples of the same one. I told him I wanted to try on some of his polos and he said no. Something else happened that I don't remember.

I had taken galantamine and I was going on a WILD spree, but I also had to pee really badly. I eventually gave up the struggle against peeing and got up to use the toilet. I saw Jenkees in the kitchen and then walked out to the backyard. We were right on the beach and there were these beautiful green and blue trees that were waving about in the wind. I realized I was still dreaming and so I took off flying. It felt especially easy to fly in this dream and I was really excited about that. I started looking for the moon to fly towards it, but I could only see light that was obscured by clouds. I flew towards that light until the moon appeared.

I began to move at super speed and the moon got bigger and bigger, but at the same time my perspective of the earth didn't change at all. I resolved this conflict by imagining that the moon was crashing into the earth. When they collided, the surface of the moon was kind of like a moon-wall. I flew down and picked up some moon rocks. I remarked at how stable I was and how wonderful it felt to not have to worry about waking up.

The moon rocks were incredibly light and airy like meringues. I bit into one and it crumbled in my mouth and tasted just like extremely delicious chocolate chip cookies, but with the light texture of a meringue. YUMMMM.
B-Dog started barking and woke me up.

I was lucid and talking to my sister's old boyfriend that used to haunt my dreams. She was afraid that he was going to try to kill me when she broke up with him and she kind of passed that fear onto me. We were in a restaurant and he was pointing a gun at my chest, but I wasn't worried because I knew it was only a dream. I calmly walked over to him and told him just how much I appreciated who he was as a person and how much I respected him. I told him how grateful I was that he taught me some things about lucid dreaming and got me interested in it. I told him that I didn't judge him at all what happened in the past. I felt love and compassion swell in my chest and he seemed shocked and I think that he started to cry. I went over to a counter where a lady was cooking food and she handed me a burrito - it tasted amazing, cheesy, and delicious. I told her that the next one needs to have green chili in it.

I walked back to my sister's old boyfriend and talked to him a little bit more. He said that he also taught me about sexuality, I was confused. I asked him what he meant and he said some weird DC nonsense about him and my sister having a pregnancy scare that I didn't know about. I had finished my burrito at that point so I walked over to get my green chili one. On the way there I ate some invisible crunchy, chocolate candy. The lady handed me a green chili burrito, it was so realistic and I was excited to eat it. I walked back to talk more but my sister's boyfriend was gone now. However, my sister was there so I asked her about the pregnancy thing and she said to me, "This is only a dream you know, why even bother asking me?"

I told her, "I don't care, just tell me, I want to know!"

She said some more weird DC nonsense about leaving something in one of my cupboards when I was little but that she never had a pregnancy scare. I wanted to go look for other stuff to do.

I walked outside, into a parking lot, and then into a corner store. Another one of my sister's old boyfriends was working there. He turned into Tony Curtis and then I saw a short dream plot take place where this Tony Curtis character was being a corner store clerk by day and a cross dressing diva by night.

I decided that I should do a task before I wake up, so I summoned a black hole in the middle of the parking lot and it started sucking stuff in all around it. I got sucked in really quickly and then I was engulfed in darkness. I could still feel the dream world around me; It was like I was experiencing being the parking lot and the cars and the air that moved around as cars zoomed by, very strange. But I couldn't experience the dream with any of my normal waking life senses like vision, touch, hearing, smell, or taste. I felt a bit frustrated and trapped in this dark place, so I woke myself up.

I couldn't recall anything this time.

Ever been dreaming, thought you woke up, but someone in your dream had to break the news to you? I felt a little overwhelmed after I was told in last night's dream, and I was very hesitant to record this one, but here it goes.

It starts out with me in school, as a lot of my dreams do. Each person in my class had an ID number, and for an activity, had to get each classmate's ID number, describe that person in a mean way, then say "yes, that's how i actually feel about that person" or "no, that's not how i feel." I met up with one of my classmates outside a bar where they were meeting what I assumed to be her husband. This girl didn't know we were meeting up, I just had to get her ID number and be on my way. She was slightly frustrated to see me when I walked up to her, so quickly got her ID on the towel I handed her, and she handed it back. She and her husband left. I knew this person from gradeschool in reality.

I don't remember this middle bit, but I do remember being at 'home' and playing video games. One was a shooter, military-type game, one was an open - world driver, and I remember specifically that the text in this game was very clear, as in it's not regular dream text that changes as you're reading it, and the final game, I assume was an LSD dream emulator look-a-like. It didn't have any gameplay, there was just an odd animation of a 2D face from the side which resembled the art on generic playing cards, and there were 2 different face sprites, and it looked similar to a Cyriak YouTube video. At one point I was walking around this house, and I couldn't help but notice how vibrant the colors were in my dream. At this point I knew I was dreaming in the back of my mind, but I was also going with it. On the floor in a room (assumed my bedroom) were a pair of pants that looked like they had 3 legs, and in that same room at one point there were 2 Doberman dogs sleeping on the ground. I knew if I interacted with them they would probably wake up and attack me or something. It was around this time I heard my dad downstairs. I started heading downstairs from a different room upstairs when the downstairs lights and TV turned off. As I got to the bottom, he jumped out from around the wall as a jump scare and I thought it scared me awake. I was completely thinking I was awake. I went back to the room with the pants and pointed them out to a guy with me, "in my dream these looked like they had 3 legs," I kicked them a little to look at them when the person with me did an inhaling "S" sound (Don't know what it's called) and said he said "I hate to break it to you..." I looked around for a moment. "I'm still dreaming," and for a moment my heart dropped slightly and I wanted out of this dream. I wanted to wake up. It wasn't a scary dream, I just didn't want to deal with it anymore. I ended up pushing the person I was with to the ground in the living room. It was light outside. I punched him in the face but it behaved like rubber. This has happened before. He looks out the window and says, "Ahhh, purple rain." I said "I'm pretty sure you've seen purple rain before," assuming he exists in the dream world. I looked out the window and noticed the rain. The sky was a medium blue, and the horizon was purple. I then felt the moment of waking up, and a second afterwords felt like I woke up again, as if I was in a double sleep or something. I was satisfied to feel my arms under the pillow, and to be in my bed. I didn't like feeling trapped in that dream.

A series of FAs where I am trying to fall asleep while a DC keeps distracting me so I can't seem to transition. After a few more FAs, I realize the previous ones were actually dreams so should have already acted there.

Scene change, some on and off lucidity scenario with family members at grandma.

Inanimate object - blanket lady

A bit later, I get a wave of really strong awareness and remember thanks to reading other people's reports the inanimate object task. There is a blanket so I lift it up with some sort of thought control and say hello. I begin to laugh and it answers me with a creepy echo laughter. Moreover, it turns and twists and becomes the upper part of an 18th century woman. In the dream I try to memorize the shape to eventually draw it later on.

Clone

After this I take quite a while trying to remember any other tasks. I am even overly concerned that all this strain will certainly end the dream, but luckily it doesn't and I recall the clone task. I try to think about myself while turning around but nothing happens. I decide to half close my eyes, risking the dream disappearing while thinking of an image of myself but again nothing happens. Finally, I decide to open the door and expect to see her/me there. This seems to work and I finally meet her. We go into the corridor where there are a number of somewhat harassing DCs and then into the kitchen. I have no idea what to do with my clone though, so we just walk around from room to room until her features change.

Then I spot Gordon Ramsay who looks very tired and I try to talk to him. Fluctuations in lucidity, rises up again while I speak to him. He asks if I can hear him well. There are distortions in the direction of the sound for a moment. The alarm wakes me up.