Date: 04/06/2022 Bedtime: 3.30am Awakening: 8am Return to bed: 8.30am Method: dream consciousness Attempt: successful Final awakening: 11.30am Phase experience: No Murals To Be Found DREAM STATE I'm a member of a boarding school and meet up with a group of boffins in the woods at night in order to converse with them. It's our secret rendezvous to eat what we are reputedly not allowed: chocolate muffins. Suddenly, our indulgence is interrupted by a lorry driving through the forest towards our social circle, causing my uniformed friends to disperse. Subsequently, I explain to someone that I had been given the opportunity to devour a delicious chocolate muffin and that one of the other lads had a caramel one which I tasted vicariously, an amazingly advantageous ability which is deemed to be completely normal. Scene shift: I'm on a small island which is the stage for a reality TV show, having somehow landed there and immediately regarded as a mystery guest by eminent contestants. Ulrika Jonsson asks me why I'm so short, making me feel inadequate and a little self-conscious. I do my best to speak graciously and politely—partly to make up for a perceived, physical shortcoming. However, no matter what I do, I feel like an alien or an outsider. I spot Xavier Bardem aboard a luxury boat sailing on a moat surrounding the villa and, feeling starstruck, I tell the others I'm quite fond of the actor. I am ushered into their residence and Ulrika shows me around. I clock a screen displaying a picture of me as a new contestant and notice that my face resembles that of Christopher Hitchens'—making me think that I am unconsciously emulating the public intellectual's expressions due to having watched him debate Robert Wright on YouTube. Scene shift: I meet up with Anne-Marie as it's her birthday and she gives me a lift in a convertible from the close to a strange underground workshop. She is dressed up like a dog's dinner, all in leather and curiously a lot shorter than in real life. I give her a big hug, a kiss and wish her a happy birthday. WAKING STATE I realise that Anne-Marie does not drive and her height was inconsistent with reality (the impossibility of my former neighbour being considerably shorter than I remember is dismissed by a focus on, and delight in, an inflated ego towering over her when we embrace). The uncritical assumption that it was her birthday betrays a mnemonic failure because her birthday has already been and I messaged her on Facebook wishing her a happy one. Then there is an ID anomaly that also makes me considerably younger than I am in real life: I thought I was part of a coterie of boarding school boffins; on a separate oneiric occasion, my countenance resembles that of Christopher Hitchens' beyond just an emotional expression. Unusual situations to look out for are exemplified in the dream scene where a lorry interrupts a 'muffin rendezvous'. Flawed logic that tasting a muffin vicariously through another boffin's taste buds is perfectly natural, when it is an impossibility, was present in the dream state. Scene shifts are common, too: I was on a reality TV show and suddenly, it is Anne-Marie's birthday. I have also been dreaming about celebrities every night: Xavier Bardem and Ulrika Jonsson. After using the loo, I return to bed with the intention to induce a lucid dream. I try the wake-initiated approach but fail to relax sufficiently on my back for about ten minutes, deciding afterwards to turn on my side and fall asleep. DREAM STATE During the day, a mustachioed food vendor is offering quiche to my family through the kitchen window of a radically different house. Inconsistently, he regales us with cheese sandwiches and charges after his so-called samples. I point out to my family that what we are getting is not quiche, but they say it's good and worth buying. Scene shift: at night, in my bedroom with Alfie and he tells me someone is outside. I open the balcony door to discover an architectural anomaly—there is no balcony; instead, a porch with two approaching teenagers wielding toy guns, and playfully pretending to be burglars, is manifestly before me. To my right, a staircase leads to the street below and next to it I make out strange neighbours arriving before entering the house next door. Dwelling on the structural inaccuracy, I conclude that I'm dreaming. PHASE STATE I rub my hands to stabilise the dream world. Returning to the bedroom replica, I decide to glide downstairs—encountering strange globular objects floating in the air at the bottom of the staircase—and head towards the loo whilst expecting to encounter a mural displayed on black walls for artistic inspiration but never reach my goal. I believe I wake up but still test the bedroom environment just to make sure. At the foot of the bed my fist goes through the carpeted floor and I know for sure that my surroundings are oneiric in nature. I sink into the floor in order to land in the loo imagined to be directly below so that I may find a mural in another attempt to seek artistic inspiration, but I descend into a dark space filled with some kind of pressure that almost feels like gelatine restricting my movements. Spinning causes the surrounding darkness to be replaced by an upstairs environment more congruous with my former address at Lea Close than the current one at Gardner House. Jumping out of one of the windows of an oneiric version of my former abode lands me on a fire engine parked right outside the front door. Upon seeing a party taking place in the opposite house with some people outside beckoning to me, I descend from the large vehicle to take a gander. Amongst the dream characters inviting me in are Poca and Andy Waters, who call out my name. Inside the house I find a lot of confusing but colourful decorations but no murals to be found. I lose lucidity at the party. DREAM STATE The party is characterised by debauchery and overall hedonism, including a butch lesbian pursuing me whilst declaring her lust for 'little boys'. Scene shift: I walk away from Lea Close with my mum, who complains incessantly about my former neighbour from hell, Helen, pointing out how conniving the woman can be. My mother wants me to go with her to confront our awful neighbours who are apparently near the local shops. I look back at my former house and see Stacey's silhouette behind a glazed front door and can tell she is wearing colourful summer clothes. PHASE STATE I'm back in bed and my head is hissing—a clear indication that I am in the hybrid phase state that makes lucid dreaming possible., I get up to what I recognise to be an inaccurate bedroom replica and therefore an oneiric environment. I search the house for murals, gliding faster than anybody could run, but find nothing, eventually flying out of the window of Melody's room to encounter a rustic vista radically different from Crane Park in the real world. The grassy field is missing and I'm flying over a muddy, tree-lined track with houses on either side (instead of a block of flats on the left as viewed from Mel's room in the real world). The houses are beautiful—some of them wooden and reminding me of the Old West—and curiosity gets the better of me. Descending to check out these properties, I expect that they also hide murals. I find empty rooms everywhere, finally coming upon a room with two beds ostensibly hiding sleeping people under their covers. The first bed I uncover is empty; the other turns out to hide a soft toy resembling a little dog that gradually morphs into a teddy bear. I wake up. WAKING STATE Scene shifts are quite frequent from daytime to nighttime scenes. The abodes are never quite right and there is a sense of traveling back in time to old addresses or neighbours that don't exist (nobody lives to our left). Unusual situations also come in the form of hedonistic parties and social contradictions, such as Poca and Andy Waters in the same room, often occur. It is a shame I couldn't find oneiric inspiration for a mural—I guess I must be more insistent in the dream world next time.
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