non-lucid

Dec 22

I dreamed I was at some sort of beach area (maybe with tide pools?). Just before that, I’d been having some weird bdsm dreams that I ain’t sharing online (basically I was borrowing some kinda book or dvd from the college library and it was full of wild stuff); this one was much more family-friendly.
It started off sunny and warm, and one of the first things that happened was that I found a baby sea turtle. I scooped it out of the water (not really feeling the water but seeing and feeling the turtle very vividly) and excitedly showed it to the rest of my family.
Soon enough it turned that there were loads of types of turtles around, including something called a “castle turtle” that was huge (maybe like three feet across) and had its head coming up through the middle of its shell, perched on a long neck. Its name was basically a reference to its defensive mannerisms and centrally situated head: it peered out over its shell as though looking out over its castle, and was constantly prepared to swim away from danger coming at any angle.
There was also some sort of kitten/turtle hybrid, which, in adult form, didn’t have many kitten characteristics, but which gave birth to straight-up kittens. The kittens couldn’t breathe underwater and had to learn to swim at least a little (they were bad at it no matter what). I was quite worried when I watched from underwater as a kitten, trying to swim, got close to the floor of the shallow water and seemed at risk of getting its flailing front paws tangled in a seaweed plant. Ultimately, I rationalized it as “a way for kitten genes to spread out into the ocean.”
After that, we moved a short distance down the shore, and everything grew much colder. It’s hard to remember, but I think the family was getting in a van when I noticed a huge turtle’s neck sticking out of the water, completely covered in a thick layer of ice.
I got excited and yelled for my family to see this and help me, while I started removing pieces of ice. Soon enough the turtle was free, and retracted its head underwater… only to come back up a moment later. It seemed that it was quite attached to hanging out in that position, even if it meant becoming frozen. Underneath the ice, its coloring had some brilliant oranges and greens (which clashed a bit, but was quite striking all the same).
There were a lot of details in the dream that I left out because they were confusing, vague, or nonsensical compared to the rest of the dream. I hope that by only remembering the clear parts, it’ll help my dreams become more clear and stable as well.

Dec 23
This was about reuniting with a girl from my old youth group (NG) and her developing an eating disorder. I wasn’t hugely on-board with that as a dream topic so I didn’t write it down.

Dec 24
I dreamed I was in the middle of nowhere, at night, in an area where peeps were all about adopting dogs. Not the first time I’ve dreamed about nighttime countryside things so it all felt a little bit familiar.
Somehow I arrived at the house of the Main Family that’d led everyone else in adopting dogs (specifically, the mother of the family was the Dog Adoption Guru of sorts). They had a big golden retriever on their porch (I think?). I wanted to talk to them so I literally just… walked in the front door and then called out to let them know I was in their living room. It felt like the wrong approach even in the dream, but somehow it didn't occur to me to knock on the door... or else it seemed like they weren't home and I decided to straight-up walk in to check.
Surprisingly they didn’t mind the intrusion. The lady and her husband showed up from a back room (the kitchen), like they'd just been hanging out back there, and I’m not sure what we talked about but eventually they tried to sell me some cereal. They had big boxes of cereal arranged along the walls of their dining room (the layout was living room, dining room, kitchen, from front to back). They tried to sell me a Fairly Large box of Lucky Charms for $130, which was ridiculous even in the dream.
I ended up settling for smaller boxes of cereal, running around $30 or so, and figured I was getting a good price.

Dec 27 (gore warning)
Dreamed I was trapped on a space station in a horror scenario. I was with a colleague, whose name and face I don't remember and probably wasn't aware of. Our other four colleagues were already dead by the time the dream started, their bodies drifting very gradually within the station. I was watching the vacant face of one of these bodies; her eyes were open and staring, and as I watched, they slid over to look directly at me.
This was reason enough for my colleague and I to barricade ourselves in one room. I can clearly remember there being a sort of shaft going down through the floor of this room, with one of those "staring corpses" floating inside. I shoved something down there to block its way in case it got any ideas, and then put the shaft's flimsy plastic covering on top.
After that, my colleague and I had some sort of terrible idea; we had three or so bodies (either human or some form of robotic doll) that we were going to mutilate and then arrange around the room as part of a ritual. Even in the dream, I had no idea what we were specifically accomplishing by doing this. Regardless, we set to work, cutting out the body's tongue and placing it in its lap, and then slicing open its cheeks so that its mouth fell open. At this point there was blood all over it, and more pouring from the gashes in its face, and we were just about to put some finishing touches on all this and move on to the next body when some rather-more-sane survivors burst through our barricaded door and saw what we were doing.
The second they broke in, my colleague and I panicked, realizing that they were about to get the wrong idea. We tried to call out to them that it was okay, hoping that we could placate them before they decided we were insane, but since I had no clue what we were even doing or why, there wasn't much I could say other than "NO! It's okay!" or something similar. Obviously they paid more attention to the bloody spectacle than to my unconvincing words, running into the room and then coming to a halt with expressions of shock and anger.
In retrospect, I'm pretty sure my colleague and I were the craziest peeps on the station.

Another dream was that I was a TA back at UVA, running a math class that my brother happened to be taking. He was, as usual, struggling in his classes, and I was tasked with putting together the exam he was about to take. The temptation to make it easier for his sake, or even to make it easier for him specifically, was almost overwhelming; however, I never actually reached the point of the dream where I chose how to structure the test.

Dec ?
I don't know when I dreamed this one, but I dreamed the family was visiting our grandparents (father's side) for the holidays. Somehow it was pretty unpleasant and I think I ended up making microwaved meals for myself to get by. There was something else about a game but for a long time now, the concepts I've encountered in dreams are terribly difficult to translate into real-life terms or even remember correctly... and this dream was no exception.
That said, I've been reading about kaizen, and I might be able to apply mind sculpturing to lucid dreaming in a way that makes my dreams clearer and less abstract (the book in question is One Small Step Can Change Your Life by Robert Maurer).

I've been thinking about lucid dreaming for months now, feeling the vague urge to get back into it. Still, I've never had the proper motivation until now. I'm currently at home with my narc-dad and experiencing severe anxiety as a result, and since lucid dreaming was how I coped with all of this growing up, it seems suitable to rely on it now.

All recent dreams:

Pet Store
I had a rather long dream that was focused around the concept of pets and pet stores—actually it's more accurate to say that they were unsuitable pets, such as a straight-up crocodile, and one of those frilled-neck lizards (which I identified in the dream as a basilisk).
The pet store owner insisted that the basilisk would make a good pet and was very lonely besides. I looked down at the basilisk (contained in a glass aquarium that doubled as the pay counter) to see it scrabbling against the glass in a corner, in a way that I read as "being lonely and needing comfort." I made up my mind at that point to come back for it later, because adopting it was the only way to make absolutely sure it would be okay, even though I didn't feel fully qualified to take care of it and I needed more money.

I believe there was also something less related to pets, that had more to do with kids reading a book together. There was also something about going to a zoo.

Packing
I'm in the NH house with A, trying to pack for my upcoming flight. Unfortunately, I see that my pill bottle and the desk are absolutely covered in ants. In addition to regular ants, there are unrealistically tiny ants in a shifting mass.

Being Hacked
I dreamed that a server I was in charge of had been hacked, and the server files deleted. I didn't have a way to fix this, and I was trying to make the best of the few options I had.

Had some dumb dreams I didn't enjoy. First the family was in the car looking for my sister. We found her next to a creek, and I jumped in and tried to make my way to her without crushing the local wildlife or getting my shoes wet. There were toads everywhere. At one point I was astonished to see a small one get caught by a thin piece of spider web and lifted away. I didn't see the spider responsible for this action; it looked more like some sort of automatic trap.

Then we retrieved Jess, and the next bit had to do with Dad and some stupid design he'd done to a car that involved a lot of french fry decals and design choices. Like, there was a big plastic french fry he'd put overtop the antenna. I ended up removing absolutely everything I could to make the car seem normal again.

Then there was an odd segment where Dad was reclaming the car and putting the french fry crap back despite my protests. Oh well.

Last night had some weird military focus. It's hard to remember exactly what happened, but I was a soldier, and some other soldier managed to fuck up something important while I was near it. I was in disbelief at this dude's idiocy (he blew SOMETHING up, I can't remember what it was), and then the nearest commanding officer spotted me near the thing and thought it was my fault.

So then she chewed me out for a bit or hurt me or something. I didn't really care that I was getting the heat for it because the dude who'd actually done it had ran off and I didn't know his name or face, so it's not like I could've pointed them in the right direction. She got most of the rage out of her system and I rolled my shoulders and carried on. Easy.

Just here to throw down some fragments I suppose.

First (two fragments?)
A brief dream that I was a swordswoman with an amazing glowing orange firesword, dressed in vibrant red. I was protecting another swordswoman in some sort of castle level in a video game. Specifically, there was a moment where she would be attacked by some warrior, and I would block the heavy blow with my sword. It was super amazing and epic and my character was rad as hell.

Later, I was playing this game with either my boyfriend or my brother, using xbox controllers. At this point, it shifted into a Lego version of the game. The other player was being the main character/swordswoman, and I was now a gunman.

And then (a dream)
Dreamed I was at some sort of restaurant with my father and sister. The place consisted of many buffet areas in a ring, with the floor sloping up and down as it went.

At first, I was just trying to grab food like they were, but I kept losing my plate somehow. There was also a moment where the little girl behind me, part of a large family, kept physically pressing up against me as she waited in line; even when I moved forward she would move with me, until I whipped around and practically snarled at her and her family to back off. (Part of me was thinking that this was sort of odd.)

After giving up on the actual buffet function of the restaurant, I started skating around the place. I was wearing clunky shoes that could slip along the hardwood floors as though I were skating, and I started using that to get around the place, effectively turning it into a racetrack. First, I was simply trying to keep up with my family as they navigated to various buffet areas, but soon I was simply racing around the place because it was fun.

And then the place turned into a sort of gaming level, where people could race around the ring with fake guns trying to hit as many targets as they could. My boyfriend was there suddenly, absolutely acing the level and having a great time, when suddenly the police burst in with a freaking SWAT squad, ostensibly because there'd been a shooting. I couldn't stop my momentum and ran right into a policewoman with my gun, and they were all saying to drop any weapons, but I sort of figured that since my gun was fake that couldn't be what they meant. At any rate, I ended up in handcuffs laying on the floor, and so did a ton of the other people at the restaurant-turned-gaming-spot-turned-site-of-a-possible-shooting. Even kids, as it turned out, were not exempt from being handcuffed and forced to wait.

They also put some sort of retainer in my mouth, which hurt my teeth (and felt just like my old orthodontic retainer), and then put some kind of rubber retainer in on top of THAT one, and added a rubber noseplug thing besides. I just let them do all this, trying to be the most peaceful, nonviolent person they had ever handled (and somewhat masochistic besides, but they didn't have to know that). They hadn't done a great job with the handcuffs, so I tightened them a bit myself so they would have absolutely nothing to complain about, and waited. And then they also blindfolded me, but since it was a dream it didn't really work.

After a while my boyfriend showed up, miraculously unhandcuffed considering his previous status as Champion of the Shoot-Things Contest. I managed to crawl towards him and get his attention, and once he was kneeling next to me holding my hand I felt nice and peaceful. And eventually the police were like YUP EVERYTHING'S COOL NOW and I was able to get rid of all the weird shit they'd put on me, feeling rather sore. I woke up with my teeth still hurting.

And also I just remembered (another dream)
An odd dream that I was some old man's hostage in his car. He was railing about things he was paranoid about, and I was figuring that I should play along until it was over, when I suddenly realized that he was driving us directly towards the ocean. I panicked slightly, but figured that once the car was underwater I would just leave by going through the window, and then we were rollling into the waves and the car went underwater and tipped over off a 10 foot drop in the sand. I panicked a bit more but figured once the car had landed I would still have time to swim to the surface.

Then this odd thing happened, where I was holding my breath but knowing that I didn't really have to hold my breath. It were as though I were watching a movie, and holding my breath along with the main character as they swam, despite knowing it was fake (and I even remembered during the dream that some people do this). I think I/the main character may have made it to the surface, but by that point it felt like I was imagining the whole thing, trying to hold it together—and still not knowing it was a dream for some reason.

Wow okay I remembered way more than I thought I would nice.

I dreamed I was an android in a world where androids were being purged, for whatever reason. I was still the me from real life, still had the same family... but they'd adopted me when I was a small android, and I'd grown from there.

I was such a well-made android that, for all intents and purposes, I was the only one who knew I wasn't human. This was quite a privilege considering the circumstances, and I was trying to use my ostensibly human status to assist my fellow androids in their attempts to escape eradication.

One rather shocking moment sticks out in my memory: a group of androids were hiding in a secret room behind a wall, with two of them unfortunately still out in the open, when an extermination squad of robots rounded the corner and absolutely annihilated them with flamethrowers and gunfire. The flamethrowers were apparently a new thing, firing gouts of plasma so powerful that they could simply melt an android into nothing. The robots, apparently feeling no need to save ammunition, kept firing on the already-dead androids until there was hardly anything left, and also fired some shots at random, with some going into the secret room where the hidden androids were watching in horror and fear.

I was watching all of this as though incorporeal, positioned outside the secret room and in the direct path of the flamethrowers, but simply observing. I couldn't see the androids inside the secret room, and feared that they'd been hit by the gunfire. And I remember being afraid of the pain the flamethrowers would cause if they were used on me, wondering what it would be like to feel myself melting and burning the way the androids were right in front of me.

The robot troop marched away without discovering the androids behind the wall. We carried on without the two androids we'd lost, despite the primary character status they'd had (I think they'd actually had names, and one of them had been a source of good humor for the rest of the group).

The dream restarted a bit, but this time it was Christians that were being eradicated rather than androids. I was still helping them, though I remember wondering why I was putting myself in danger of death when I wasn't a Christian myself. Or maybe it was something like, I'd been raised Christian without it ever quite rubbing off on me, and now, although privately I didn't share the belief, publicly I was going to be killed for it.

At any rate, the things hunting us were now single androids who would look human right up until the moment they had decided to kill you. When that happened, their face would warp like a Picasso painting, one eye vanishing and being replaced by a migrating, malformed nose, while the other eye shrank to a dot.

There was also a variety of prisons and exterminators, one of which was called The Dove (I think?). The Dove was really only a prison in the sense that you'd be imprisoned in it for the 60 seconds it took for you to move along a hanging conveyor belt into a furnace, whose fires could not actually be seen until you were inside them. This was where I was certain to head if I were captured: knowing this I let myself be captured anyway.

There were two forbidden books we had on hand: Mere Christianity by C S Lewis, and another one that my brain invented and whose name I can't quite remember... Door, perhaps? These were the books I had on hand when an android spotted me, and I didn't really feel like trying to survive anymore. I let it spot me, let it recognize me and watched its face mutate. It hit me with some sort of poison attack that left me propped against the wall, dying. Or at least, I thought I was dying, thought I was going to die soon (and the dream end? there was no sense that dying might have Real Consequences... more that the story would be over), but the dream continued for long enough that perhaps I began to think I would still be headed to The Dove after all.

The dream stopped making sense after that. Phooey.

So last night I had a dream that I was lucid. Which really isn't the same thing as being lucid, and I refuse to be satisfied with this...

The Sad Stone Harbor Dream
So Stone Harbor is basically my favorite place in the world to be, and for whatever reason it's pretty common for me to dream that it's the last day of Stone Harbor and I'm wondering where all the time went and trying to figure out how I could've used it better.

This time, I dreamed that mom was making me go to a soccer game on the last day of Stone Harbor, when what I really wanted was to be at the beach, in the sun. This made me so upset that I started crying, and ran upstairs... now I was in the 1319 house, heading for the balcony. I brushed past dad in the hallway, got to the balcony, and jumped off so that I could fly.

This is where my thought process was a bit weird. Apparently, I believed that I was awake, but that by the time I got to the balcony, I would be dreaming, without having to fall asleep. At the same time, half of me was considering the possibility that I would simply plunge to my death off the balcony in my mistaken belief that I was dreaming. I was actually pretty surprised when I practically lifted off the balcony as soon as I stepped off it, and though I was happy to be flying rather than, y'know, dead, I was a bit confused as I tried to figure out when exactly reality had become a dream. Frustratingly enough, I completely discarded the possibility that the entire thing was a dream: I firmly believed that the frustrating soccer situation constituted "reality," but that I had somehow transitioned to dreaming at some point.

So, I won't call it lucidity. Although I believed I was "dreaming," it didn't make any conscious sense. If I had been conscious, I would've realized that the entire thing was a dream, and that it's impossible to transition from awake to dreaming without falling asleep. It was like a nonsensical dream version of lucidity...

Farther along in the dream, while I was trying to survive the local serial killer and his sadistic games, I straight-up thought to myself, "I'm dreaming," while flying. I even repeated it a few more times for good measure, trying to make it sink in... but c'mon. If I'd been actually lucid, I would've realized that I could've blown up the serial killer with a thought, instead of my only ability being flying.

I want to be awake in a dream. I'm barely even awake in real life...

Y'know I'm starting to think my DJ titling could use some work.

Anyway I had a dream that I really liked last night aaaAAAA

Dream: The End of the World
So my real world family was there (though not my dad, I don't think), and some serious shit had gone down that had swamped most of the world in water. I think it had been some sort of massive hurricane ... let's say twice the size of a normal one.

In the dream, the family had a different home which was now half-flooded.

I can remember a few things that happened (though I'm writing this up a bit late). First of all, there was a segment involving my brother and I swimming deep in the water amid the submerged buildings, and only being able to breathe because there were friendly whales that would exhale hovering bubbles of air that we could sort of "sip" from. It seemed that when the world flooded, the whales had swum into human territory specifically in order to help people like this.

Then there was a sort of... more personal segment. I'm just gonna put it into spoiler tags to give myself the illusion of privacy.

Spoiler for kinky torture things:

So, I ... flew? up to the roof of the house, which was surrounded by water that came a bit past the first floor. (If I did fly, I didn't notice enough to make any sort of connection between this and dreaming.) The roof was perfectly flat and wood, sort of like a Terraria house.

There was some sort of witch woman up there. The thing is, I don't know what to call her other than a witch. She was an "evil", self-sufficient and independent magic user who'd apparently taken an interest in me. I think I went up to the roof knowing she'd be there waiting for me. I don't like the word "witch" though, because it summons this idea of some woman in black with a pointy hat and broomstick, and this was more of a... enchantress? But not seductive.

I don't know if any words were exchanged. I just know that soon enough, I was on my back with my wrists and ankles tied down by her magic (sort of hard to see, but I think it was pink and glowing/sparkling). She started to torture me somehow, keeping up the pain until she started to get a reaction out of me. It didn't really hurt (or I don't remember any pain or unpleasant sensations), but as the pain got "worse" I began to struggle and cry out—which was just what she wanted to see. Though I don't remember the pain, I do remember the feeling of my wrists being restrained by the odd, somewhat formless magic (my ankles kicked free at some point, but she didn't care).

This went on for a while, I suppose until the dream "got bored" and moved on to something else. (I think in general my brain isn't great at concentrating on and extending a single moment. I think that's something I'd like to work on, because I was enjoying the whole thing about as much as she was.)

I think she represented me: the sadistic, always-frustrated part of me that is never allowed to really hurt anything. The part of me that wants to be powerful, self-sufficient, magical, in control. But I think it's easier for me to hurt myself than to hurt someone else.

After that, the dream introduced me to a whole group of very small mice ... fish things, of various colors. And my job was to sort of lead/control them in order to accomplish some sort of task. Man, the stuff I'm writing down doesn't really capture the actual feel of it. But as usual, I think there was some odd, unrealistic twist on it that doesn't relate well to real concepts. Hmph.

The Dream Sign of the Day Is: being tortured! woo

So interestingly enough my renewed efforts are already paying off! Better awareness, more vivid/consistent dreams, and something odd happened where I almost spotted a dreamsign but my dream was like OH, NO THAT ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK IT IS, HAHA and changed it. You can't fool me forever, dreams.

Dream: Being a Good Person
So first of all, this dream seemed to be set in the past when I was still attending church (good dreamsign, I've dreamed about that church a few times now). I was friends with a girl who was disabled in some way and needed to drink lots of sugarwater, and she'd been assigned to read three verses in front of the whole church, but didn't think she'd be able to do it. So I figured the right thing to do was to offer to read two of the verses for her so she only had to do one. But truthfully I was quite anxious about reading in front of the whole church, and the majority of the dream consisted of me worrying about it. Then my sister pitched in and offered to read one of the verses for me, which I gratefully accepted.

There were other, more confusing and less straightforward parts of the dream, but I'm not going to write down things that don't translate into real life because it always ends up not being true to the nature of the dream. And maybe if I only write down the parts that make sense, my dreams will start to make more sense?

Dream: Family Reunion
So this was a long, fairly consistent and realistic dream with a theme of something like, "traveling." There was a lot of time spent on canoes, in cars, and on metro trains (which children kept falling out of), and my mother, sister, and extended family on my mother's side all made an appearance, as well as my boyfriend. That said, I don't really consider any of them to be a dreamsign even though seeing them in person is abnormal, and this might be because I want to see them.

I think there's a part of me that is motivated to become lucid by the wish to change the dream and avoid unpleasant things. For instance, seeing my dead grandmother alive again is actually rather unpleasant because I don't know why it keeps happening, and there might be something I'm trying to avoid (thoughts like, could I have saved her from her dementia, or what does it really mean that she's dead ... maybe I blame myself for something, or maybe I miss her, I don't know what it is). So, for that reason it makes perfect sense to make her a dreamsign, because it serves the dual purpose of getting me lucid and allowing me to recognize what's happening and escape it. In the same way, seeing my father in the dream is a dreamsign because I try to avoid him in real life as much as possible, and naturally I would prefer to avoid him in dreams as well.

At any rate, after a somewhat unrealistic visit from my boyfriend (I left without saying goodbye to him, probably represents my anxiety over doing something similar in real life and being thoughtless in some way) and a half-remembered canoe outing with my mother, I was in a car in Virginia on my way to a famous vacation spot to meet up with my mother's side of the family. On the way there, we passed something I'd never seen before: a theme park or museum or attraction of some kind that featured massive inflatable ships and things floating on the water outside, and enormous recreations of Lego figures. They may even have been moving. I noticed one of the huge inflatable ships looked a little deflated, as though it were a natural result of the thing being on display for so long with no means of refilling it. I thought about how nice it would be to go there with Alex, and figured he'd probably be able to afford whatever the (probably crazy) entry price was, and together we could have the time of our lives in ... whatever this place was.

Then I was on a train, and children kept getting confused because the train would stop and the doors would open, but sometimes it wasn't the right place to get off and the platform would actually be dangerously receded. So throughout the train ride, children kept falling onto the tracks and their family would have to fish them out. A couple times I thought a kid was going to get crushed, but the dream never acted like one was (there were no freaked-out reactions from the family, for instance), so it seemed like things were... "okay" for whatever reason.

Adam Sandler (or so my brain called him) and his son were also on the train, going to the same vacation spot as I was. I seriously don't know much about him, but my brain was like "white comedian man" and I figured "yeah he's probably one of the ones that says fuck a lot." I was thinking about how well-behaved his child was in that he wasn't trying to throw himself onto the train tracks like the other kids had been, and then I might've accidentally taught the kid the f-word. I said to Sandler that the kid had probably already learned that word from him anyway, and Sandler just sort of smiled like that was the kind of thing he would expect someone like me to say. He really had a reserved feel about him in that moment, as though he'd completely removed his comedian persona and was just trying to relax and be himself with his son. This got me thinking that I'd made a mistake in assuming that real-life Sandler and comedian Sandler were the same person, and I was chastising myself a little bit because I don't like to make mistakes like that.

At any rate, the vacation spot was some set of cabins and things next to a bay, and there were a bunch of friendly squirrels running around in one area because there were so many oversized acorns on the ground. You could pick the acorns up and hold them over the squirrels, and the squirrels would beg for them as though the acorns weren't right there on the ground to begin with. And I distinctly remember eating two of these acorns for... for some reason. Both times the outer shell was a bit pliable and tasted awful, while the inside was perfectly nice, and both times I failed to even try to shell the acorn and suffered the consequences. So... not really the high point of my intellect, there.

Then, the most interesting moment. I heard and saw my grandmother nearby, and as I observed I realized that her dementia was entirely gone. Somehow she had made a full recovery. And then, the first inkling came that this was important and odd, and perhaps... and the dream reacted. In an instant, Granny had vanished, and one of my older aunt-in-laws was in her place, sounding (though not looking), quite a lot like her. It really had the same feel as thinking you see something, and then looking closer and realizing it's actually something else entirely. Then I overheard someone say (or perhaps it was simply the dream straight-up narrating), that there was an older man who constantly got this aunt-in-law confused with Granny, and it was so sad because he'd been so close to Granny before and missed her quite a lot. Hm. Not much else interesting happened after that.

I guess I need to figure out why I want to be lucid. I think there's a huge part of my motivation that simply wants to escape bad dreams and images, because this was what originally got me into lucid dreaming in the first place. I used to have nightmares as a kid, and realized pretty quickly that these were dreams and that killing myself would wake me up. For some reason I'm now remembering one particularly memorable time this happened when I was quite young: I dreamed that I was being forced into a marriage with an alligator by my foreign royal family, and that soon I would have to climb into bed with this literal animal and be eaten and torn apart by it. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom and stabbed myself in the stomach with a fancy pair of scissors. This didn't hurt or feel like anything, but it was apparent that I would soon die from this... when my family broke down the door, all of them crying as they realized what I'd done. They pointed to the alligator in the bed, now slain, and said that they'd killed it, and I didn't have to get married to it and there was no need for me to die. I was crying a little too at this point, if only because they were so sad, because I was quite ready to leave the dream at this point and didn't really want to stay with this odd, sacrificing-people-to-alligators family. Regardless, it was too late. I died and woke up soon after.

One way to interpret this would be to say that my dream somehow regretted my leaving. But that might be me personifying the dream when I shouldn't be, again. Perhaps I was trying to teach myself that dying to wake up wasn't necessary, and that there were other solutions? Man I'm really not sure what it all means, I need to think about this more.

So I'm reading Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D. and Howard Rheingold, and now my interest in lucid dreaming is somewhat renewed. The issue is that currently (and for a long time) I've been lacking awareness of my surroundings in some odd sense that makes it very hard to notice when I'm lucid, even though my dreams are generally completely unrealistic and, on top of that, have a constant "dreamlike" feel. This means that if I happen to wonder if I'm dreaming, just that is enough for me to go "Oh yes, duh, of course I am," and start doing lucid things... but it's rare for me to have enough awareness even for that.

I was thinking that my dreamsigns could be things like "a change in context," since that happens almost every time in my dreams, but on the other hand I think my mind simply accepts changes in context without thinking about them at all, and maybe I should pick something a bit more specific that I tend to notice more, such as my dead grandmother, having fully recovered from dementia, making an appearance.

Dream: Castle Shenanigans

So at first it was me, my dad, and my sister, all exploring some sort of enormous castle. And I was trying to get away from my dad (because I hate even being in the same room as him), which turned into me sprinting through the castle at night, down long hallways and up stairs, hoping to eventually lose him. But I don't think I ever did. I distinctly remember turning a corner and sprinting down a long hallway, trying to put the full length of the enormous castle between us, and trying to make it to the end and turn the corner before he could see me. I failed.

A bit later in the dream, I was exploring the castle with him (and it was daytime). It had the feel of him showing me a university that he wanted me to attend, and trying to point out to me what a cool place it was. We visited the castle library (complete with studying students), which had stacks of books against one wall, comprising about three levels of balconies that overlooked the main study space, and with an elevator that somewhat dwarfed its surroundings. I think it may have been for wheelchair accessibility. I think I explored the stacks a bit.

Then the dream changed. Still castle-themed, but now it had the feel of a movie. There was some sort of plucky main character (me) who wanted to get into the castle and join the ranks of the powerful servants of the king, but his approach was to climb in through one of the upper-level windows and try to avoid the wrath of the servants until he'd proved himself enough to be accepted. Or something like that.

Before that, there was a segment where a similarly plucky group was trying not to get killed by lackey-type knights in red who were hunting them with all the personality of machines. One of their solutions was to escape to a church, where, surely, the knights would not be able to perform violent acts. However, upon arrival in the church, they found the pews draped with the bloodstained bodies of several lackey-type knights in white, and through the window spotted the knights in red marching towards the church entrance. So, we all ran down the stairs to the basement, guided by one of us who knew this particular secret, and then crawled through a rather tight, upwards-sloping tunnel in the wall that made an uncomfortable right turn. I hated crawling through this thing because it was such a tight fit, but we made it, and on the other side was a better, safer church. And for whatever reason, my dream repeated this same scenario another few times.

Then, back to the story of the person (lizard?) trying to join the ranks of the castle servants. This time, he was exploring a tower placed just outside the castle, which he hoped to use to jump through into the castle through a window. And this is where things get confusing, because the dream just kind of made up concepts and they made sense to me at the time, and now that I'm awake I'm not sure what was going on. First of all, the main character was a sort of humanoid lizard. And the servants were also animal-themed, I believe, and quite powerful. The lizardman (me) met some of them in the tower and might have been captured by them? And then they might have started putting him through the various tasks that one must pass in order to be one of the castle servants. I'M NOT SURE. IT'S ALL SO HARD TO EXPLAIN. WHATEVER.

--

None of this gave my brain any kind of pause or made me think, "Hey now, all this is sort of unrealistic." And I know this is normal for dreams, but if I were to just have that thought for even a moment, I would realize that I was dreaming.

Instead it feels like my brain locks into some kind of "tell me a story" mode and rolls with whatever the dream does. It kind of has an automatic feel to it. Also, my dreams haven't been that vivid lately. Or it feels like even if they were vivid, I wouldn't be aware enough to notice. Uuuuugghhhhh.

Here's a couple more I couldn't write down 'cause I didn't have my computer.

Dream: Night before last
Dreamed I was having Alex (the bae) watch Pirates of the Caribbean with me 'cause he hadn't see it. But since I was dreaming it was a very different account of Pirates of the Caribbean... the pirates were all enslaved by a rather un-piratey, non-sea-related witch. As a result they were all pretty miserable. Then a somewhat younger girl showed up to try to free them all, and for a while I was her. I managed to halfway free the pirates, which got the now-angry witch's attention. She turned on me and I had the distinct impression, similar to what happened with Mr Blue Wife Beater a couple nights ago, that I didn't stand a chance vs her.

This is kind of an unusual feeling for me, because I sort of expected that if someone who wasn't a monster came at me ready to fight, I would be all over them because I love fighting. But now, not only did I not feel like trying to decimate these guys, I also got the impression that I had no hope of defending myself, so both times I didn't try and just got messed up. It's weird. I feel like defending myself should be an automatic instinct, but it hasn't been lately.

At any rate, in the next moment this crazy magic-using woman was all over me, throwing me to the ground and shaking me. And the dream cut back to Alex and I watching the movie on the couch together, watching this enraged magic lady slam this girl into the ground over and over. I was like, "This is just like when a spider's wrapping something up," 'cause that was honestly what I thought and honestly what it looked like, it wasn't the dream putting words in my mouth. It was so violent and deliberate.

When the magic lady stood she looked like a mix between the two of 'em, and the other girl was gone. So either she absorbed the girl, or she possessed her, I'm not sure which. The dream ended soon after.

Dream: Night before night before last
I dreamed about Leffen again which sucks for me 'cause he makes me feel SO insecure. But in the dream he was actually nice to me, which somehow makes me feel even worse... my dreams are just wish-fulfillment trying to convince me that he could actually like or care about me. *gets depressed*

Anyway, I dreamed that I was back in the Cheverly house, in the living room, and Leffen was using it to stream him playing some game. I felt like I was just getting in the way a bit, and then, at one point when he walked out of the room, he walked back in at the same time that I went blind. I was between him and his chair, and I wanted to hurry up and get out of his way, but my vision was totally frozen; looking around didn't change my view at all, I just had this locked-up scene stuck on my retina. I tried to explain this to him so he would get why I was just standing there. He actually seemed a bit concerned, which, when you think about it, is a pretty realistic reaction to someone going straight-up blind.

I managed to feel my way to the couch and lie down. Closing my eyes made everything black, so I stayed like that for a bit, and after a while my vision was back.

So then Leffen let me take over his stream for a bit, and I got on really hoping that his viewers would like me (all of which was unrealistic for a few reasons). The game he was playing was something like... you're trapped in a house with a whole bunch of almost-human monsters who really don't do much but slowly try to follow you around. Even if they caught up to you, they didn't try to attack you or anything, and YET, it was pretty scary. I ran into the bathroom and tried to lock it with a key, which was an almost paper thin piece of metal that did pretty much nothing. Still, I got the door kind of locked, enough that when they tried to get in, the doors bumped inwards but didn't open. I went deeper into the bathroom, which was quite a large bathroom as it turned out, and then lost track of where I was.

Next I was in a locked room, next to a door that had a little window above it that I could crawl through. So I did, and found a couple of monster-humans on the other side. One of them was this faceless thing with rubbery brown skin that looked up at me with a small, gaping mouth. For some reason I didn't find this guy disturbing, but I did have the brilliant idea to jump down on him as hard as I could. And it worked! Unlike some dreams where trying to do something weighty has unsatisfying, floaty results, this time it really felt like I was landing full-force on this unfortunate rubbery brown guy. And I crushed him. Then I ran off andddd I forget what else happened. WOO.

I think not having my computer has had a positive effect on my dreams... Might have to explore that further.

Man, my dreams have been more vivid lately. I've had plenty of dreams where I'm not totally present, where it doesn't feel like my decisions are totally up to me because I'm not really there myself... but lately my dreams have been giving me more control. Feels nice.

Dream: A Game
So I dreamed I was playing some kinda game, like I was on a game show. Everyone was paired up in teams and each team had a different official color. We were red, me and Handsome Jack. Well, he was sort of a combination of Handsome Jack and an acquaintance of mine with similar issues. I don't remember much about the other teams. Actually, there might even have been another person on our team, but I can't really remember.

So the game kinda consisted of a sort of obstacle course. It seemed to be set in an endless white void, or a massive white room, and I believe the first thing we encountered was a great deal of water, a veritable sea. It looked kinda strange since it was in a white room; like, much paler than the average sea.

Our first task was to cross this sea to the plasticky room about 60 yards away, and there was a selection of plasticky boats to use, maybe in little cubbyholes. They looked like those circular snow sled things, but a bit deeper. I think we just had to grab our appropriately red-colored boat, or maybe a couple of 'em, and somehow boat across the sea. The dream might've skipped that part. The impression I got was, the dream sort of thought that boat + sea was pretty self-explanatory, but then realized that my trying to get across the sea with just a circular boat and no paddle would actually be pretty difficult and time-consuming, so it just skipped it.

So we ended up on the island/room, where we quickly encountered SOME kind of obstacle. I kinda remember that there was a large group of people and there was some squabbling or fighting going on. I decided (and I don't always get to decide things like this, in dreams) to wander into the next room, where I encountered a kinda scary-lookin' old guy. And that was kind of important because by choosing to wander into the next dream I was sort of cutting into the dream's story; everything pointed to me being supposed to stick with my group and take the rooms one-by-one, but I instead chose to ignore this directive and try something else. And it's cool that I got to do that, it's been a bit of a trend lately. Hope it sticks! It's more fun when I can make up my own mind...

So I fought the scary-lookin' old guy who actually might've been a zombie, and soon enough Handsome Jack showed up, wondering where I went, and helped me take the old guy out. I'm not sure what the old guy's deal was. My first impression is... shopkeeper. But old and angry and sort of confused.

OK I don't remember too much else. I'm gonna make a post about the rest of my dreams 'cause like, I've had a couple over the last few days but I didn't write 'em down 'cause I didn't have my laptop.

For whatever reason my dreams last night were a little more normal (and less uneventful), plus there were a ton of them. idk tho let's see what I remember

Oh right, also for some reason last night I had this sense that I could picture things in my head very, very clearly. Sharp shapes and contrast and vivid colors, when normally my visualization feels like it's got a thick layer of film grain overtop it. It felt very... refreshing. Not sure what triggers it.

Dreeaaaammmm
So, there was something before this that I can't recall, but at any rate, whatever was going on before got suddenly replaced by me being a ninja in some well-populated castle, and climbing all over the walls trying not to get caught. I had cool abilities that made me super agile, which was fun. This kinda went on for longer than I'm making it sound, but heck I can't reMEMber what HAPpened.

Anyway in the end some magic dude or chick caught me, chained my arms, and then blew out a corner of the room. Beyond was empty air and clouds, so it turned out it was some kinda floating castle in the sky. Then whoever it was looped my chains over a broken part of the corner so I had to sit there like, right on the edge, though at that point it was third person so I didn't get the full "oh boy I'm right at the edge" experience.

THEN I dreamed that my family and a buncha other people were refugees migrating to a more modern culture, and to be allowed to settle there we had to beat 'em in a dance competition. Or maybe it was just a jumping competition. We took some time preparing and then when I was up it was versus this kid who like, did this awesome hip-hop dance that I really couldn't compete with... and then, when it was my turn, I just jumped in the air a few times. But I was having a great time. But yeah I don't think it helped us win the competition.

And THEN. UGH. I could feel one of my lower teeth getting loose. And my dad was like yeah, all your lower teeth are baby teeth, so they're gonna fall out. I'm like SRSLY?? Because IWL and in this dream, I have a permanent retainer on my lower front teeth. So then this loose tooth just kept getting looser until it was gonna fall out, except it couldn't because of the retainer, and I'm like toying with it with my tongue and it just didn't feel good. At all.

Lastly I dreamed I was bein' attacked by this rude nerd who had a buncha rubber bands. And I was holding a baby so I couldn't go on the attack, I had to stay curled up protecting this baby from this madman's continuous rubber band storm. They kinda stung, too. I tried shooting a couple back (not sure how I did that while still holding the baby), and I remember that there were quite a few piled near me that he'd shot at me, some wide and flat and some pretty thin. One of the thin ones was broken, and they were all kinda old.

Then Morty from Rick and Morty showed up and beat the guy up in this crazy aggressive way. He was wearing gray pants and yelled something like, "I LOVE IT WHEN THERE'S A GRAY AREA" like, y'know, when crazy violence got totally justifiable. The rubber band guy seemed to be starting to get up, and I just landed on him from above butt-first, tryna crush him, except it didn't really work 'cause I was too light. And then Morty joined the fray and the three of us became this flailing ball of limbs that, from third-person, looked totally hilarious.

Then I think I woke up.

Dream
Pretty much just dreamed about stressful things. Ben came back from college but I was so angry with him I wouldn't even talk to him or acknowledge he was there. Granny woke up in her coffin and hurt her hands banging and clawing at the lid until she was let out, though once she was, she looked even healthier than before she died. And Dad got into Harry Potter lore and said something casually about how he thought I was like Voldemort, a racist sociopath, and I snapped and yelled at him so much he ended up physically backed into a corner.

BLEH. No fun dreams lately.

w0w I'm tempted to start losing motivation after a mere WEEK. I'm just gonna give it more time.

Dream
Part of the dream was that I was part of this druggie community but we weren't actually supposed to have drugs of our own, or somethin' like that. AND YET. I had a whole bunch of L-Theanine stashed in my room. Which isn't much of a drug, but I had to keep it a secret like it was heroin or something.

Also, my room was more like some abandoned apartment in a halfway-destroyed building. You had to climb some rubble and collapsed stuff to get up there. Getting down was a bit easier, since some of the rubble formed a sort of slide, I think?

I also dreamed a cute lesbian was tryna get me to cheat on the bae and I was like uhm. Sry I can't. Then she was tryna show me how to give my hair a really intense undercut one-sided style and I was like idk if I'll look good with that ?? I'm just not punk enough.