false awakening

OKAY LET'S SEE

Dream - Disappointment
So I dreamed that I somehow saw a brand new scene from the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, where Cloud was in the Forgotten City being interrogated by Kadaj on the location of something important (my brain apparently tried to come up with something important that Kadaj would want the location of, and came up with "glue"). I really liked this new scene and went looking for it on YouTube after I "woke up", but attempts to search for it by entering such scene-relevant quotes as "Give up the glue" for some reason only brought up videos I had no interest in, such as The Running Man "Give Up the Glue". I eventually became fully convinced, much to my disappointment, that it had only been a dream, and that I would likely never see the scene again. :c

False Awakenings
Lessee, then that YouTube false awakening aside, I had a couple more false awakenings re: something I had to do real quick at 7 AM-ish before falling asleep again. I had two different dreams where I accomplished the task, and when my alarm finally woke me up at 7 AM I was half-convinced I'd already done it a couple times, when in reality I'd never (as far as I can tell) left my bed.

Dream - Frustration
So this one started out with Jess and I chilling in this otherwise-empty house, perhaps abandoned by its previous residents. We were in the bathroom with the bathtub filled with water, but when I looked in it I saw two weird insect-things I'd never seen before. They seemed to be an aquatic version of house centipedes, though with marginally thicker legs and fewer of them, which were squirming on the surface of the water like protozoa (thanks BIO 101). I called in this strangeness to some radio or TV show, who promptly announced to everyone that some 14 million cases of these weird insect-things being in peoples' homes had been reported.

Then mom drove up and frickin' took me away from the house for some reason. I didn't particularly want to leave, but next thing I knew I was in the car and we were racing down the highway. I started sort of crying (it felt like I couldn't really cry, just sort of half-cry?) to try to convince her to take me back to the house, but it seemed to just make her annoyed. Then I tried to open the door to potentially jump out, but the force of the wind outside made it impossible to open. So I settled on crying and hoping Dad wouldn't suddenly appear in the front seat, since he would've seen right through this weirdness and told me to cut it out.

Then I'm not sure what happened. I ended up in the middle of nowhere at night, trying to find a way to head back. I seem to remember performing some stunt where I ramped a truck off something in a reckless manner, and I may have encountered a homeless guy or hitchhiker or something, who was my key to getting back to the house. But I'm not totally sure.

I somehow ended up back at the house. Still nighttime, and now Jess and Mom were on the front porch, apparently witnessing my arrival. I was incredibly irritated by having been relocated, and looked over to see what looked like an 18-wheeler fuel tanker chilling in the dark nearby. I reached out and grabbed it with psychic power, feeling a satisfying sense of weight as I lifted it into the air. I slammed it down on the front yard (apparently lifting things into the air and then slamming them to the ground is a thing I do nowadays). Then I hopped up on top of it, and started channeling intense heat around my hands. I pressed both palms against the truck, and the metal turned molten (though without glowing), allowing them to sink through. As I did this, I noticed that my hands felt at first cold, and then lukewarm; one of the things I worry about when I consider using fire powers is the potential that I would just burn myself, but it seems to be a nonissue.

I think I was trying to cause a gas explosion or something, though not with the intent to hurt anyone. I was just really irritated and lucid enough to realize that I could do what I wanted. I think that's where I woke up, though.

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Update: April 26 2014 (aka the next day)
At the time I had this dream there was some stuff about it that didn't make sense, like the part where I tried to manipulate mom by crying (very petty behavior, something I don't think I could ever do IWL) and the fact that I saw Dad as someone who would see right through my attempts at manipulation (IWL he's more clueless than shrewd).

Then, today, I got into a big shouting match with Dad. Apparently he'd been building up tension ever since Mom requested that we have the house totally cleaned up by Tuesday, so a photographer can take pictures. He tried to hint at how we should do a little at a time, say five minutes here and there, so it would get done early, although the rambling way he requested it made it a little hard to take seriously. And then he blew up tonight (after some prompting on my part). Some of the things he mentioned was the fact that he feels like Mom and him can't request favors from us (my sister and I) and that he feels like they're too easy on us. He felt that Mom in particular is helpless to request that we get things done, or maybe it's that we won't get things done without plenty of prompting and her being over my shoulder.

After his temper tantrum I certainly felt like slamming an eighteen-wheeler around. The obvious parallel aside, it seems to me that Mom driving me to somewhere I don't want to go while I act passive aggressive about it and hope Dad doesn't show up and make me stop is a parallel to Mom requesting that I get cleaning done while I put it off and Dad tries to have me get it done early.

Not trying to imply that I'm some kinda weird psychic or anything, I think I was just sort of unconsciously picking up on the stress signals Dad was sending out.

The sad thing is it's not like I'm some slacker who doesn't get things done. I'm going to sleep the stress off, wake up after a good night's sleep, grab a shower and some tea and bomb the absolute heck out of my to-do list, and it's gonna be super satisfying, especially after I got basically nothing done today. And all this drama will have been completely unnecessary, except for pushing my bedtime back another hour, and giving this dream some reasoning behind it.

In other news I'm thinking of reading Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. Still pretty skeptical about him (my Psych professor doesn't like him), but the more one reads, the more ideas one has to draw from.

LUCID SUCCESSSSSS just in time for the end of the competition (#17)
Imma try extra hard to get the dream timing figured out AHH I feel like my recall is so bad now, I keep losing important pieces of the dreams and the timing gets so confused whyyyyy
To be fair I've never tried to recall dreams every morning. So that might be why. But this is a LUCID DREAM. WHY WOULD I FORGET THE DETAILS OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT ...
is my recall getting worse or am I just gradually becoming more demanding...
you know what, looking back I'm pretty sure it's that I'm being more demanding. I want to have PERFECT RECALL and when I don't I act like that's some huge problem. And my poor brain's just trying its best every time, probably, and I'm just running it into the ground because nothing's ever good enough. so I think I'll just accept what happens and not worry too much about somehow forcing my brain to have non-stop perfect recall.
step one for having a less stressful liiiiiiife~
plus I just feel like crap, maybe I'm getting sick or something. Huh.

*some caffeine later*

expect some tense changes at random 'cause it took me forever to write this...

Dream 1 - At the Beach (Lucid #3)
Alright, I remember for sure this is the first dream I had.

So I think the family's driving to this beach and we pull up, in the dream I was like "aha, this is [Spring Whatever Beach Name from IWL]!" like we'd been here before and it was familiar, but now I'm realizing it was just some place my brain made up. Weird.

Whatever let's call it Spring Beach, we hop out and it's this sweet, Stone Harbory sort of place, with white sand and hotels by the shore. Very nice.

We head into the hotel and get situated. We're all in some room that reminds me of a college dorm or something, and I'm off near the back, closer to the window while the rest of the family's having a grand old time taking pictures. Of each other. In a way that wasn't weird at all. *blacks out memories* Then Ben wandered over to me asking why I was chilling over there and I was like, eh. Just 'cause.

Next, mom and dad had wandered off, and Jess and Ben and I were kinda meandering the hotel because that's the best thing to do when you're at a hotel with your siblings, and then it just starts storming like crazy. I look out this large window to the right, and see the white beach with the waves crashing and all that good stuff, and lighting going from the sky to the sea, looks pretty amazing. And then, probably because I'm anticipating when the lightning stops, it just kind of keeps going, just lightning pretty much all the time. Scary. I start thinking about how close the hotel is to the ocean, and how oceanside storms are crazy or whatever.

Then I look left and there's FLOODWATER WASHING UP AGAINST THE WINDOW. AND RISING. I'm like WHAT. I think this is about when I did a reality check and became lucid, but since I can't truly remember I ain't countin' the reality check. I just know I became lucid at some point.

Uhhh I don't knowwww why there's a hole in my memory at this point, but I believe I wandered outside and I remember quite clearly attempting to summon matches (like I'd been planning since I picked my three-step tasks for Scionox's: pass hand through object, because I'd never done it before, pull matches out of my pocket, and then make a fire and control it). I reached into my pocket (which was very small and tight because jeans) and dug around for a sec, experiencing a brief moment of doubt before discovering a box of matches and pulling them out.

I opened them and took a match out, and was considering striking it ... but I was standing in grass in front of a forest, and some old forest guardian was freaking out because he thought I was going to burn the place down, so I just dropped it on the ground instead.

HMMM I think I woke up. I also know for a fact that I flew around at times, but the memories are hard to fit anywhere.

Oh well I suppose I'll give up on this one.

Dream 2 - FA (Lucid #4)
So I'm lying in bed face-down thinking that I'm going to fall asleep soon, when I feel this crazy wave of vibrations go through my body. It basically felt like, uh, vibrating. I was going to get all fancy and describe it but I can't totally sum it up. Felt familiar though, for some reason. I experience a bit of fear that this might be another SP episode and for a moment it almost seems that way, but then I realize I can move? Or something? GAHHH MEMORYYYYY

Anyway I didn't really get what was going on, was lying still again, then felt a second wave of those crazy vibrations and had the idea that this was my dream body. Did a reality check, success, sat up in bed and looked out the window. Crazy. The blinds were raised or gone and looking outside I see my front yard, except it's not my front yard because it's far more fancy. It looks amazing, actually. Much better than my REAL front yard...

I want to get outside, so I start tracing a hole in the glass. Once I complete a circuit, the enclosed glass just falls out and basically vanishes. I do this a few times, then stop and try to fit through and fail, so I keep doin' it. Eventually I manage to fit through and drop to the ground.

There's a road leading away from my house, which quickly becomes a city street that branches left and right (visual aid: T). I proceed and go right, then left into a sort of alley that opens up into a nice behind-a-restaurant eating area. There are two black cows chillin', and I decide to try to use my arm cannon on them, but it fails. Maybe I just can't make up my mind what exactly is supposed to happen? Then some dude runs up behind me panicking because I look like I'm about to blast his cows. Apparently he came all the way from the countryside chasing these dumb cows.

Think I had another FA, but this time when I did the nose pinch check, my IWL nose kinda sniffled and I realized I was close to waking up. I focused on immersing myself in the dream until I felt that I was fairly distant from my IWL body (sniffling stopped), and then proceededdd...

It was raining and I was thinking about how I'd already done match summoning, and now I had to do elemental manipulation. I decided to try to control the rain, and reached out towards a car going down the street to my right, trying to imagine the rain somehow converging to stop it. Not much happened.

Next I decided to try simply moving cars around (the idea being that it was metal manipulation somehow), but that failed as well. Then I saw a giant firetruck and stepped out in front of it, holding out my hand and imagining it coming to a stop, which it did—but I figured it was because the drivers hadn't wanted to run me over. The firetruck was so large that I only came up to its grill; the window the drivers were looking out of was well over my head.

I reached out, put my fingers under the grill somewhere, and started lifting, still thinking about metal manipulation, and the firetruck suddenly became as light as anything, and the whole thing lifted off the ground. I tried to throw it, but it being so light it sort of drifted backward through the air unsatisfactorily, instead of crashing to the ground with an earth-shattering rumble. I'm not sure it ever really hit the ground, but it did arc somewhat.

I was going for some kind of elemental manipulation but yes, under the stress of the moment I performed mass-TK instead.

And then there was one last bit where I was at some kind of theater and tried to clear a space on the wall for a portal, moving bulletins and junk out of the way only to find more under them. Finally I'd cleared a semi-workable space and drew a tall rectangle on the wall, four sides with four colors, and then tried to imagine Stone Harbor on the other side. It didn't quiiite work...

And uhh one last fragment where I was by my window again, but this time there was some ... video-game, anime sort of girl sitting to my left, wearing odd clothes (black but with bright colorful highlights as well), never seen her before. I demonstrated my ability to drop out pieces of the windowpane by drawing two parallel lines at the same time, horizontally right across the window, at which point a wide, flat rectangle dropped out.

I'm callin' that two dreams 'cause who knows. Could've been more, maybe less, so I'm working with the middle. HMMM.

WELL WELL WELL.

Lucid Dream #1
Note: I've had lucid dreams before, but only a few. I'm starting at 1 anyway.

It started off with a false awakening, which are rare for me.

I wake up in the 1319 house (J room) and start getting ready for my morning (not even remotely realistic for a false awakening). The first thing I do is take a bath in the 2nd floor bathroom, and it's sort of strange and scary; the water is oddly dark and near both edges lengthways (how 2 describe ??) I can feel an uneven edge in the floor, some sort of precipice, little rough bits that threaten to cut me. I can't see anything, though. I'm also wondering whether a bath is really how I start my mornings, wouldn't a shower be faster? Don't I usually shower? Or I suppose it's usually a bath. My mentality seems to be present-day, despite the surroundings.

I may have spent a brief amount of time getting ready in my (J) room post-bath, but the next thing I remember is sitting next to Ben (he's wearing a grey t-shirt) in the living room, on the blue couch. There are some hints towards present-day reality, such as the fancy computers he and I are using, BLEHEHH. I'll write this part later it's too frickin' sad. (My brother was home over spring break and yesterday he headed back on a train so yeah he's one of my favorite people ever)

*SIIIGH* so at first I'm just brushing skin foundation over someone else's artwork in a big notebook, I'm not sure why. They used some sort of wet clay marker or something, so the skin foundation sticks to the art but not the paper. I'm havin' a good time just brushin' it everywhere even though on some level idk if I'm just hurting their art. The feeling was pretty cool though, very realistic. Nice detail.

Then I'm showing Ben some kinda audiovisual webcomic, or more that I'm just letting it play on my computer and he looks over sometimes. I don't remember the storyline very well, although I do remember it was kinda urban and at one point four guys were in a car, and the driver guy suddenly passed out or something, maybe he pulled over first, they were kinda just waiting for him to wake up. One of 'em gets out and takes a phone call from their boss, tells him the situation, gets his orders, and then leans down, sticks his gun in the car, and shoots the driver. The perspective was from outside the car so you couldn't see anything violent.

Lastly... ;-; I said something to Ben like "did you miss your train?" in a sort of awkward teasing voice, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said no, he didn't. I said "So you're in [college] right now?", and he said yes. This all came as sort of a shock. I considered the implications of this, that I must have been talking to him over Steam while interacting with a hologram, except that explanation wasn't a way to cling to reality; it was more that, because this was a dream, that sort of thing was possible. I did the nose-plug reality check, found I could breathe, and fully realized I was dreaming. (sry for tense change)

I get up from the couch and say "I'm dreaming" out loud just to confirm it. Everything feels very real. I walk towards the front door; I'm standing in the living room doorway when I hear Ben on the couch behind me. I look back half-expecting him to have changed somehow (something I'm worried about in dreams, you'll see later with the lifeguards), but instead he's completely gone. Dad's grey blanket is piled up where I'd just been sitting.

I focus on trying to get outside. My first thought is to phase through the glass; it seems like glass would be the easiest thing to phase through, but I find myself pressing my hands up against it instead. I'm sort of frustrated by this. I try for a bit longer, and then I decide to simply break the glass.

I slam it with my fist and manage to break it somewhat. The door is actually split into two sections of glass, top and bottom, separated by a wooden bar piece. I figure I'll have to break both, though the logic isn't all there, and continue punching the glass and broken edges (sustaining no pain or damage). At some point, because it's not really working either, I stand back, hold out my right arm, sort of brace it by putting my left hand on top, and try to summon some sort of concussive blast to shatter all the glass, thinking of Mega Man or perhaps Kadaj with his materia. Nothing happens. Then I try breaking the lower section of the glass with my eyes closed so it'll be easier to crawl through (logic ??). (My eyes-closed view was sort of interesting, because it was all dark except for a mental picture of the broken edges of the glass around the hole.) Finally I just stand up and try the (old, loose) doorknob like a normal person, and it comes off in my hand. Underneath is another one, slightly larger but also very old and sort of ugly. I try that one and finally manage to get out the door, opening the next door after it easily.

Now I'm outside in the 1319 area, in the daylight, taking in how real everything feels. I start flying up to the roof, thinking about the dreamviews competition (#17), and have no problems getting to the roofs of the townhomes. There are some smaller townhomes on top, minis. One of them has sort of a colorful beach house design, with a sign out front explaining that it was designed by a 6-year-old and is up for auction. There's an open house going on inside.

I get the idea to summon Ben back, and start calling his name, then turning around expecting him to be behind me. That doesn't work, so I head into the 6-year-old-designer house, still calling him. He's sitting on the stairs inside (green shirt now), which are so small no one else can get by, and I hear people on the second floor. I come sit by him, a bit lower on the stairs.

There's a sort of odd brown mug with a cover/lid of some sort on a convenient wooden platform (there's a better word) in front of us. I decide to try passing my hand through it. I hold my hand out palm down, fingers together, and try moving it horizontally through the mug. At first it doesn't quite work, and then I find my fingers passing through it rather slowly. It seems to be solid all the way through, not really a mug. The sensation of moving my fingers through it is like passing them through slime of some sort. One successful pass later, neither the mug nor my fingers are changed in any way. I try it again, a couple times, and while I'm trying the last time I say "it's like air!" out loud, in the hopes that it'll be a more "professional" sort of "passing through", more like a ghost. It doesn't work, though. At least I'm optimistic.

I go outside next, and, still on the rooftops, head up the street towards the mall. (I think, for the sake of convenience, I'll designate the direction I'm currently heading "North". The houses I'm walking on face West.) I see some sort of Stone Harbor-esque structures in the distance (Northeast) and go towards them; there seems to be an ocean or perhaps a bay on the East side up ahead. There's also a weird metal structure that I'm interested in flying to the top of, for no particular reason.

Now I'm walking North-ish down the street in the Stone Harbor area, no longer on rooftops. I start thinking about whether I can turn this into some kind of chase dream (or more specifically, "being chased"). As I'm thinking this, I notice five-ish lifeguard guys behind me, reminiscent of some sort of gang. I wonder if they're going to chase me, and decide to keep a low profile for a moment. I go around a corner and then busy myself admiring the detail of the dream, peering very closely at the white-washed wall, which has some ugly yellow spotted stains on it, while they walk by to my right. Then I investigate another wall (slate gray?) so my back is to them.

At some point as they walk by, I think about the way that things can change easily in dreams. It tends to surprise me how stable dreams are, given that when I try to imagine things IWL, I can't get anything right visually and it can't seem to hold steady. At this point, thanks to my thought process, one of the lifeguards abruptly doesn't have a head; only a sewn-up and scarred neck stump (thx Outlast). He keeps walking just fine, and I think his head may have returned after a moment. idk if that counts as a dream power so much as a mistake.

Next I fly around a bit more, maybe up to the metal structure, and then land next to a tide pool with minnows inside. On closer inspection, however, I realize they're actually small piranhas (some are still actively switching to being a mini piranha). I say something surprised out loud about piranhas. Then I hear a sound nearby, and look down to see a small frog/toad-looking thing sort of snuggled among the wet stones. I wonder if my dream wanted me to throw him to the piranhas, but decline to and move on. I think I probably woke up shortly after, without my alarm going off.

Re: the WILD attempt.
I woke up after 6 hours, tried to remember dreams but only got fragments, decided to write them down anyway, briefly reviewed BillyBob's WILD tutorial, set my alarm to wake me up in an hour and a half, and then laid down, on my back, to sleep. Then, for a while, I could feel myself slipping closer to sleep by degrees. I was trying to monitor how exactly it felt: the heaviness in my chest, the deepening layers of almost-sleep, my mentality. I could feel it when I slipped down another layer, and realized this was the closest to sleep I'd ever been while WILDing. However, at some point I rolled over onto my side; it's more comfortable. I should probably just start out there.

Eventually I started getting the hallucinations, and this time I tried to simply observe them, smothering my impulse to tense up. I was surprised to realize that I'd felt this sort of thing as I was falling asleep before, where I would hear-without-hearing someone's voice or some noise close by my ear, although the visual hallucinations were less familiar. First they were quick, flashing images, and then, a bit later, some static and fuzz. I kept trying to focus on clapping my hands in the front office of the 1319 house, and when I fell asleep I woke up in the 1319 house. I wasn't lucid, though. Could still use improvement.