non-lucid

I am flying somewhere over the United States in an F-16 fighter jet. I am not the one actually flying the jet; it is being flown by a guy with dark sunglasses who looks like Swedish heavy-metal guitarist Yngwie J. Malmsteen. We are flying at night. I am very glad I am not the pilot, as I have no idea how to operate an F-16. I do have a job, however: my job is to control our altitude. I do this by shifting an M-16 assault rifle which is sticking up between us like a gear shaft. Leaning it down makes us go down; pulling it back makes the F-16 go up higher. The position of the barrel determines the direction of our altitude. I look out the window and see the terrain spread out beneath us like tiny twinkling Christmas lights. We are cruising at super-sonic speed, and Yngwie is very cool and relaxed behind his dark shades.

I point the barrel of the M-16 down and we start to descend. We suddenly hit some turbulence and the jet begins to rock and bounce around in the clouds. This frightens me. Suddenly I am not so sure what I am doing with my M-16 assault rifle altimeter. Should I go back up? Continue on course? I think to myself, one slip up and I'll kill us both! To my great relief, Yngwie grabs the barrel and lifts the entire gun out of its boot and puts it on his side. The jet stabilizes. We are safe. When we eventually land, I notice it I am in a vaguely familiar place - I recall the neighborhood from some prior dream fragment. Dreamt 2/7/2017

I am at a concert without the band present. A large group of people are gathered, and I see a friend with a strange man standing next to him. The man is staring at me intimidatingly. I stand up from my seat to try to get a better look at the empty stage. I feel myself pressing up against someone. Everybody is very close together and crowding each other. I look over to see who I am brushing up against and I see it is that strange man. He gets very upset that I am touching him. He gets away from me and continues to stare me down from a distance. I ask my friend to talk to him (because he evidently knows him), and apologize on my behalf. My friend writes a note and gives it to the man. The man comes over, sits down and reads the note. He then looks up at me and I come over and sit down beside him. We shake hands.

After shaking his hand, he suddenly transforms in a nice German lady. We strike up a conversation and start telling each other about all the different places we've visited in the world. She tells me she's been to Azerbaijan. Not to be outmatched, I lie and tell her I've been to Tajikistan. We talk more and develop excellent rapport. I notice her face looks puffy, swollen. I begin to grow uncomfortable: partly because of how she looks, and partly because I am exaggerating the truth with her. I eventually remove myself from her presence and go sit on a table and try to act cool.

Dreamt 2/1/2017

I am in a lush forest with two people. I climb a thick tree because I am trying to escape from a girl known simply as "Neuf". Neuf has two people with her and they are hunting me like an animal. The man Neuf is with has a gun and he will shoot me on sight. I decide to climb a tree, moving stealthily from limb to limb as I go higher and higher. This action is extremely vivid. I am given instruction on where to climb from the people I am with. I eventually decide to climb down when I think it is safe. I am alone now. I meet up with "Neuf", who is also alone. She jumps on my shoulders and I carry her around. We become friends and she helps me avoid the man with the gun and the woman who is with him. Both of them are still hunting me. I begin to feel unsafe again and start looking for the tree I climbed down from. I want to get back up to safety, but there are so many trees in this forest, I get lost and can't find my special tree. The man with the gun suddenly emerges from a trail and looks my way. I quickly duck down another path. I suddenly see my "special tree", but with Neuf on my shoulders I can hardly climb it. I instead wait for my two my friends to come down. The man with the gun and the woman go down another trail and we lose them. Dreamt 1/30/2017

Note: I met a girl the next day at my work who perfectly fit the description of "Neuf" in this dream. Her hair color, her body shape -- everything, perfectly. I told her about this dream and she wasn't surprised. She is interested in astral travel and lucid dreaming and believes dreams can be meshed, or shared. As far as 'Neuf", I only know it is the French word for "9" or "new". Her conjecture is that it may have something to do with the lunar cycle.

Overgrown Weeds

I am at my old childhood home in Hollywood, Florida and notice all the houses in the neighborhood have nice, manicured lawns. But the lawn in front of my old house is all overgrown with weeds. The weeds are huge, towering. They look like gigantic sheaves of wheat or grain and they put out a golden glow against the blue sky.

Surgical Ward Transvestite

I am in a hospital surgical ward, dressed like a drag queen. I look at myself in a mirror and think, "I make a pretty damn-good looking woman!". A pregnant Russian lady who speaks English very well is on the floor, and she is with a male friend. She sees me and starts questioning her own looks. I think she is beautiful; she, however, doesn't think she is. She continues to seek confirmation of her beauty from me. I do everything I can to boost her self-confidence. Meanwhile, I am looking for the bathroom, but can't find it. I decide to lift my skirt and urinate in the surgical waste bucket in the corner of the hallway. A surgeon sees me pissing in the bucket but says nothing, giving me a contemptuous look instead. Embarrassed, I halt my piss mid-flow and decide to keep looking for a proper bathroom. Another surgeon comes out of the surgical station, clutching his groin and asking where the bathroom is. I tell him it's just around the corner (not true - I'm still looking for it myself), but the first surgeon walks over and points to a door right in front of us that says, "Lavatory" on it. Then he gives me another contemptuous look.

Dreamt 1/29/2017

The House at the Bottom of the Hill

I am with a short woman and we are visiting another woman who lives at the bottom of the a hill in a rural town. The area we are in reminds me of Pembroke Pines or Miramar in South Florida when I was a kid. We've both been to this house before, in another dream fragment, but now we are back. It is not clear why. And we don't quite remember how to get to the house; all I remember is it is at the bottom of a hill. I recall walking with this woman, side by side, down a road as we approach the top of a hill. I find it strange there are hills in this area, as South Florida is known to be flat. We get along well and laugh as we walk down the hill. I notice she is wearing tight, faded blue jeans.

Sumo Marriage Counselling

I am in an underground men's locker room with my wife. I am trying to explain to her why we, as guys, get upset when we feel women are trying to "push our buttons". The conversation with her gets heated, and we begin airing our dirty laundry for all the other men in the locker room to hear. There is a very heavy, muscular black guy in the corner with a towel strategically wrapped around his lower torso and groin area. He looks like a Sumo wrestler. He is staring at me and listening to us go back and forth. The way he is looking at me, I begin to fear that he will take my wife's side of the argument. Instead, he closes his locker and says a few words of comfort and walks off. My wife and I stop fighting and feel at peace.

Dreamt 1/28/2017

I am in a huge underwater amphitheater with my father. The amphitheater is a glass dome under several hundred feet of water. Along with me and my dad there are several groups of people sitting in the bleachers. We are all waiting for a show to begin. Mozart begins to play as prehistoric-looking sea creatures in mid-evolutionary stages begin to walk out from a side door. The Mozart music is original hypnogogic permutations from my subconscious of his German marches from the Opera "Die Entführung aus dem Serail"

The creatures march to this music in the underwater amphitheater, and pause so we can pet them. Some of them look like gigantic mollusks. Others look like horseshoe crabs the size of dogs and huge, mutated crocodiles. They lumber across the aisles in perfect synch with the music. Among them is a big sawfish with legs. These are all prehistoric creatures. Sitting next to me with her arm around me is a sexy blonde woman. I have no idea who she is. She leans in very close and I can feel her breath against my ear. I am wondering who her boyfriend is, and also worried that my wife might see us. Meanwhile, the prehistoric creatures are crawling all around in front of us. I have to lift my legs to let them pass by. In the dream, I remember this as a strenuous exercise. My father is sleeping next to me. He is sprawled out across two chairs. He is wearing a shirt with back lettering, but the words keep shifting as I try to read what they spell. As I reach out to try to stop the letters from moving, he drowsily awakens and tells me to stop touching him. He actually says, "If you keep touching me, I'm gonna lay you out like I am." After he says this, three men in shorts come over to where we are sitting and try to wake him. They say, "Hello" to him at the same time, intentionally loud and obnoxious. He jolts awake. As they laugh, I assure my dad I had nothing to do with this prank. The Mozart, meanwhile, has gotten more pronounced and my attention is directed toward the gorgeous music. In a brief glimpse of lucidity, I realize this music is not real Mozart, but a figment of my imagination. I marvel at how beautiful and realistic my subconscious rendition of his operatic marches are.

Miscellaneous fragments from the same night:

1. I am explaining to my son how vitamin C works in boosting the immune system. I explain that the vitamin builds a wall through which the microbes are unable to pass. In my dream mind, I see a bubble wall collapse on a bunch of marauding bacteria.

2. I am on vacation in Russia, returning to the bungalow I rented. I am somewhere down by the Black Sea I think, in a coastal resort area. As I enter the door to my place, I notice some people on the road watching me. The walkway from the road to my door is a short wooden bridge, resembling a boardwalk. When I get inside my bungalow I look at myself in a mirror. I look like a pathetic tourist: red hat, white American tennis shoes, preppy shorts and a Hawaiian-themed shirt. No wonder people are looking at me! I am suddenly very conscious I may soon be robbed. Dreamt 1/27/2017

I am investigating an area on earth where there has been recent alien activity reported. There is a huge Chinese or Korean space satellite floating above me in the sky. I am in a quiet village that has become a ghost town, going from home to home and looking in the windows. It is night and the homes are all dark and empty. There are stickers on the outside window panes of the houses that warn of recent alien abductions in the area. I come across one sticker that has a photo of a famous actor who has recently disappeared. It is assumed this actor was abducted by aliens. As I go from home to home reading the stickers, I look out over a field (the village park) and see a luminescent, glowing butterfly which flutters to the ground and slowly transforms into a human figure. The human figure stands up in the distance, glowing with neon radiance. As it walks through the dark park, I can see through its body transparently: the creature's muscular and skeletal systems are fully visible with incandescent lime-green bones and electric orange-neon muscle. It is a beautiful, surreal sight to withhold. I transfix on it as it strides through the park. I am not afraid. While watching it, I suddenly become lucid, check my hands, and discover I am dreaming. But the intensity of the dream is such, that I am totally paralyzed by the awesomeness of the sight and cannot move. My recall fades shortly thereafter. Dreamt 1/27/2017

I am with my niece's husband, Bryant. He is a mechanic. We are in an old car. The car needs a lot of work. We are pulled over on the side of the road and someone -- most likely a cop -- is asking us a bunch of questions. It feels like we are in Russia (I frequently dream of being in Russia). We suddenly translocate to an auto garage which is owned by John Hatcher, a guy I used to work for who owned a roofing company. The auto garage looks old, dingy and godforsaken. Bryant and I are getting the fluids checked for the old car. In this dream, Bryant is the driver, and I am the passenger. He tells the mechanic checking the fluid that the cap is brand new, thus the fluid should still be good. I am sitting on a bench in the shop and looking around. The ceilings are very high and I stare at up the rafters and widows. Looking up at them gives me a sense of acrophobia and creeps me out. Bryant has disappeared and I am by myself. I see gray electrical tape wrapped around the exposed AC flex snaking around the walls and rafters. The walls of the shop are made of gray cinderblock. Dreamt 1/23/2017

I am jumping from a tall iron bridge into a clear, cold river. It is in the middle of winter. There are many other people swimming in the river. This is part of a school assignment and there are military personnel who are also involved. I hold my breath and dive deep down into the transparent water. I swim under water a great distance, watching the other swimmers as they kick their legs and doggy-paddle and tread water above me. The water is perfectly clear, like swimming in a pool of pure drinking water. When I finally surface, I let out, "Wow! This water is cold!" The water is very cold, yet it is most invigorating and wonderful. I am very happy to be in the water. I wonder how I am able to swim in water of this temperature; I normally would be quite reluctant to jump into a freezing river.

I go from the river to an school office where suddenly I am standing before a black lady who looks like she is part of the adjunct staff. She asks if me I'd like some coffee. Looking over some paperwork, she says I did great, and then shows me my schedule. Every Monday and Tuesday I will have to meet a woman named "Nancy" (this is an actual lady I know from WL, one of my old customers) at a restaurant to go over my progress. These meetings with Nancy are mandatory. It slowly becomes clear to me that I am at an interview in which I am being considered for acceptance at this school. The black woman tells me she still has seven more applicants to interview. Recall fades. Dreamt 1/22/2017

I am at a dignified office party, a party which takes up two floors of a department store. There are partygoers travelling up and down the escalators like shoppers at Macy's. Nobody's face is distinguishable; everyone is a shadow figure. The building is filled the sounds of conversation, laughter, background piano music, and wine glasses tinkling. The predominant color of the party is brown -- the walls and carpet and light fixtures are all brown, invoking a very seventies feel to the aura of the interior. There is a black Baby Grand piano on the first floor. Groups of people are huddled around it with drinks in their hands as some unseen shadow figure plays smooth jazz.

As I ponder the ambiance of this party, I wander the floors seemingly invisible: nobody tries to talk to me, nobody recognizes me or even alludes to the fact that I'm there. I seem to be a ghost. When I realize this, everyone in the building suddenly freezes. The piano music stops. All the shadow figures freeze in mid-sentence, glasses raised, and the place is enveloped in total silence. I will myself to rise above them like a spirit and float around the department store. I float past them down the escalators, along the corridors, the breezeways, over the indoor balconies. To me it looks like an empty department store filled with dark, faceless mannequins.

I eventually leave the building and float out into the city. I walk amidst the rubble and ruin of where famous skyscrapers once stood. I begin to look for my brother in the rubble, but I cannot find him. I suddenly translocate from the demolition site to a warehouse filled with boxes and pallets and heavy machinery. I am now holding a glass bottle filled with a white, milky substance. I drink from it and it tastes like a vanilla milkshake/energy drink combo. Two warehouse employees join me and together we look for my brother. We make our way all the way to the back, expecting to see him sandbagging and hiding from the boss, but he's not there. I am wearing blue jeans and a blue button-down shirt -- dressed just like the other workers. I then realize that I too am on the clock now, and we shouldn't be back here. I look around cautiously and tell the two guys that as long as we hang here we should be safe from detection. Dreamt 1/20/2017

I am standing atop a small atoll in the Caribbean, surrounded by sugar-white sand and lazy palm trees. The water is crystal clear, turquoise and calm. About 50 ft. out in the water is a partially submerged Tastee-Freeze ice cream truck. The sunken ice cream truck is surrounded by jagged, chalky-white rocks. The rocks are small and smooth and I am able to zoom in on them with great detail. They provide a striking contrast against the tropical pale-blue water lapping up against the sides of the truck. I look down at my feet on the sandy shore, and when I look up again, I see there are now two ice cream trucks. The second one lay perpendicular to the first, about 10 feet away from it. I toss a small pebble into the water and watch as the ripples slowly spread out to where the trucks are. By the time the ripples reach the second truck they have grown into waves. The waves cause the second truck to crash into the first truck and tip it over.

With me on the secluded beach is a man who only speaks Russian. He arrived with a group of people from Moscow. One of the people in the group is a former client of mine from WL (he does not speak Russian to my knowledge). There is also an attractive Russian girl I had a relationship with when I lived in Moscow. In the dream she is cutting my hair as I stare out over the peaceful, translucent water. Dreamt 1/18/2017

I am sharing a hotel room with my sister-in-law, Michelle. We have separate beds. We appear to be on some sort of road trip. In the past, Michelle has given me CD's of J.S. Bach's music as gifts. This is because my wife had told her he is my favorite composer. In this dream, I am reclining on my bed and she is asking me questions about him. I try to explain why I love his music so, and describe what I experience when I listen to his art. I also give her some interesting biographical information on him. At some point, I get up to go to the bathroom. There I see an old, 80's-style transistor radio. As I push the chunky "play" button, the radio suddenly shapeshifts into an old library book on Bach. Glorious harpsichord music pours out of its pages when I open it. The music is elegant, exhilarating, exquisite...and wholly original. I marvel at the fact that I've never heard these Bach works before. I sit on the bathroom floor listening to the sounds, utterly stupefied.

The more I listen to the sounds, the more I begin to realize that this music is of pivotal relevance: it appears to be the missing link of transition between the high baroque which Bach epitomized and the lighter, more refined strains of classicism pioneered by Haydn and then perfected by Mozart. I ruminate in the dream that although musicologists conclude Bach is merely the culmination of the baroque, here I am listening to proof that Bach was also responsible for the transition into classicism! Academia will have to rewrite the textbooks!

Dumbfounded, I continue to listen to the music. As it plays on, I find myself more and more enraptured, enthralled and utterly amazed at how beautiful this music is. The synthesis of the two idioms is seamless. A lurking sensation however begins to surface in my mind as the music plays on: being a Bachian scholar, in reality I knew of no such transitional link existing in his music. This thought continues to wrestle in my mind and eventually nudges me toward a waking state. Upon awakening, I can still hear the tinkling and chiming and delicate phrasings of the passages of hypnogogic music, not yet completely faded. Motionless in bed and with my eyes still closed, I cherish the vanishing wisps of melody for as long as I can until at last they submerge back down into fathomless ocean of my subconscious. Dreamt 1/17/2017

I am walking down a path at a Walt Disney World-themed amusement park. It is twilight and there are other people on the path, walking around me. The weather is cold and rainy. People start putting on their parkas. I don't have a parka. I am alone and have a long, long way to go. I continue to walk up the path, shivering in the rain. I eventually arrive at a school bus on the side of the path parked next to a diner. I step inside the diner and it is empty. The bus driver is an old man, and he is walking around outside. There are beautiful chocolate pastries on the floor. The bus driver tells me that he will leave if I am not in the bus when he gets back.

I disregard his warning and begin eating the delicious chocolate pastries. I duck down from the window so he can't see me as I eat on the floor. When I finish the pastries, I head out to the parking lot and discover the bus is still there but the man is gone. I try to start the bus, but it won't turn over. It becomes clear to me that I should try to call my sister-in-law Michelle to show me how to start the bus. She manifests in the dream, we pop the hood, and as she tinkers with the engine, she begins to mock my wife: "Marissa would never know what to do in this situation. Serves her right!" Michelle gets the bus started, I thank her, and then drive to a dilapidated trailer park.

In the park I see a man pass by who looks like Albert Einstein. He turns to look at me with a serious gaze. He walks over to a set of wall lockers and starts rattling a compartment which has a padlock on it. I notice him pulling and heaving and grunting as he tries to yank it open. When he steps away I see the locker bulging and bending on its own. I also hear slams and thuds coming from within it. Somebody was trapped inside! Einstein then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a hacksaw blade and knife and begins sawing at the lock and using the knife as a crowbar. The person inside the locker continues to kick the door and yell and cuss. When I step in closer I suddenly see Einstein's mugshot taped to the top of the locker. He is a criminal!
The caption beneath the mugshot reads that Einstein is an operative for the Russian mafia. He is going to kill whoever is in the locker.

I don't want to see the murder. He keeps filing away at the lock and strenuously prying at the door's hinges. I expect the locker to fly open at any second. But it never does. Dreamt 1/16/2017

I am at a roadside café with a buddy of mine. There's another guy tagging along with us, but we don't know him very well. He may have been a hitchhiker we picked up. He is annoying, and we'd like to get rid of him. The waitress is a petite older woman with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair. She is wearing a traditional diner waitress uniform, with the apron sashes tied in a bow in the back. She is carrying a pot of freshly-brewed coffee and is bustling about the diner like a busy bee, filling coffee mugs and taking orders. I start up a friendly conversation with her when she comes to our booth.

She begins telling us about her hometown -- a place I'd never heard of by the name of Alkie, Texas. I keep asking her how to say the name. To me it sounds like the diminutive of being an alcoholic. Taking advantage of her southern congeniality and realizing there may be a way I could make some money, I ask her whether or not Alkie had big, upper-scale homes. She tells me there are indeed several wealthy neighborhoods, and then gives me directions on how to get to them. As I fish for more information, she proposes I take her car to go check out the neighborhoods for myself. After I reluctantly agree to take her car, she comes back from the kitchen with three keys stuck to a piece of white, laminated cardboard: one key for me, one for my friend, and one for the annoying guy who is tagging along with us and whom we can't seem to get rid of. He gets real excited when he sees "his" key, but I don't give it to him. I separate it from the cardboard and put it in my pocket.

She takes us outside to her car, an old white sedan, and wishes us good luck as she heads back inside the diner. Pulling out of the parking lot, it suddenly dawns on me I have no recollection of the directions she gave us. I just drive around aimlessly, looking for signs that might indicate how to get to Alkie. When it starts getting dark, I pull up to an old abandoned church. I'm not sure why I stop here, but the place seems familiar; it appears to be a place I recently visited in another fragment earlier that night. I have a nagging sensation that I have some unfinished business here. The three of us get out of the car and head toward the rectory. It is now twilight.

As we approach the door, we pass by two suspicious-looking men sitting on a stone bench. They stop talking and watch us. We enter the church and I quickly lock the door behind us. The church is dark, silent, empty. I peek out the little window in the door to see if the men on the bench had followed us, but all is quiet. The inside of the church is a bit unsettling. It appears that we entered through a side door leading into a kitchen. The sanctuary is to the right. The two guys I am with stay in the kitchen while I walk into the sanctuary.

There is a coffin at the altar. An old pewter candelabra sits on it, with extinguished white candles melted halfway down. In an instant, it all comes back to me: there was a funeral taking place in the church during my last dream fragment, and now it was over. But why didn't they bury the body? I suddenly realize I am in a locked, dark church with a dead body. I look around the sanctuary and see several people sleeping in lazy boy recliners. The recliners are where the pews used to be. Someone reclines too far back and falls out their chair. Other people then start waking up because of the noise. I see their faces and start to recognize them as the funeral-goers from the dream I had. It appears they had waited for me to return. They are friendly. In the back of the group, I see an extremely attractive blonde smiling at me. She captivates my full attention, and I forget everything as a powerful jolt of sexual arousal shoots through my body. Fade recall. Dreamt 1/15/2017

I am staying at a very prestigious hotel suite, akin to the Ambassador or Renaissance. I am just wandering around and exploring and marveling at all the different luxurious amenities they provide. I go downstairs to the lobby and check out the gym and shower/sauna area. Eventually, I get lost. Apparently, I am at this hotel and staying with a group of people, but I have separated myself from them. I see them in the distance but have no interest in rejoining them.

In the lobby of the hotel is a train depot, like the monorail system at Walt Disney World which runs through the Contemporary Hotel in the Magic Kingdom. I get on one of the trains and sit next to a British couple. The woman is incessantly talking to her husband and she never shuts up. We get off at the next stop, which looks like a big, empty terminal. There are rows of chairs in a circular pattern which go down into an amphitheater. I run toward the chairs and start jumping on them like a little kid, making my way towards the empty concession area in the far back of the station. As I hop on the chairs I can hear the British woman tell her husband that this was her "favorite stop" in America and that she loves to hop and jump on the chairs like I'm doing. Fade Recall. Dreamt 1/15/2017