side notes

Okay... So vividity is not a "real" word. It's a dream word, so fuck you! This was the most vivid lucid dream of my entire life. It's because I removed my Blur Lens.
SUPERLUCID

I am practicing a parkour technique I just created in this dream called gliding. It’s running without bouncing up and down. I am at my house, which in my dreams, is always a different house. Somehow I know it’s mine. I am outside in the yard, gliding to the door, a few inches above the ground, taking impossibly long strides. Then, I realize it’s physically impossible, and I must be dreaming, even though it’s super vivid. It’s 100% clear, just like real life.

It’s a balmy night here in tropical dream land. I look up at the sky, and levitate about 40 feet off of the ground. I notice a tree I am looking at starts to fade. I often focus intently on things in dreams to make my dream more vivid. I look at the sky. The clouds passing in front of the moon look amazing. Stars are out, bigger and brighter than in waking life. A moth flutters across my field of vision. I am amazed by its perfect flight and detail.

The tree below is still fading into darkness and blurriness somehow. “Should I go to the Moon? No. I have to make this dream more vivid first. Just be patient, and enjoy the moment. It’s a beautiful dream.”

I float down about fifteen feet until I can see the Moon behind the tree. The brightness of the moon makes the edges of the leaves and shapes in the tree sharpen. A zephyr blows by and the leaves blow in the wind, so perfectly vivid, it’s like magic. Now there is nothing blurry in this dream. It looks exactly like waking life. EXACTLY.

A swarm of gnats suddenly is flying around my left forearm. I somehow associate this with discomfort from the physical plane bleeding over into this one. I suddenly feel an obnoxiously intense itch on my leg. I know it’s my physical body. I can’t help it. I wake up, and scratch.

Lessons Learned and Commentary: I fell asleep in the living room at my sister's place. I woke up at 3 am, and went home. I then read one of my dreams from almost two years ago where I had an amazingly successful WILD. Uncannily, I perfectly described my last lover. (Not Angel, we broke up, but it's cool.)

I don't remember if I did WILD or not, but I did induce a lucid dream! I have released my fear of getting obsessed with my magnificent dreams, which has allowed perfect clarity in dreams, exactly like waking life. Most "regular" (not Deep Dream State) lucid dreams with me being outside at night. I usually try to fly to the moon, always unsuccessfully. This time, I just decided to be in the moment, and enjoy the beauty around me. You see, I have been working on making my regular LD's just like my Deep Dream State dreams. I am teaching my lucid mind all the things my Delta mind knows. So, it's like I am starting all over again, but I know everything I need to to get to the point where I want to go because I am already there!

I am excited about this type of lucidity. One mistake I made was I went to bed dirty. That's why I was itchy. I know it's gross, but I keeps it real. I usually shower before bed, but I crashed at my sister's place blah blah blah. Anyway, it makes me realize how important it is to dull any stimulus from your physical body. Be comfortable, clean, wear earplugs, and a blindfold or sleep mask. If your place is noisy play some music, or turn on a fan to mask the noise. These simple things are very important to extend LD time.

Another thing I learned is that not only do I have a certain sleep cycle where I have more LD's, it's always around a certain time! It's always around 7AM, even if I stay up late or whatever. I am on Spring Break. That means a lot of sleeping in, and a lot of LD's!

I have accomplished my goal of making my dreams as clear as waking life. My new goal is to stay in a lucid dream as long as I can.

I fell asleep trying to AP around 8:30 pm. I was way too tired from bodysurfing. I woke up at 2:22 am. I can't remember shit.

I think the key to WILD's and AP is to fall asleep slowly.

This is a paper I wrote for my English class. Read the Poem, "America" by Tony Hoagland.

English 100
Dr. Mark Lawhorn
Poem Analysis: “America” by Tony Hoagland
In the poem, “America” by Tony Hoagland, the poet tells a story of an experience while teaching a class in the modern day United States. A student compares America to a prison. The poet in annoyed with the young man who presumably comes from middle class Suburbia. In the middle of the conversation, the poet recalls a dream about stabbing his father. The poet compares modern America to a nightmare of floating in a pleasure boat down a river full of drowning people.
Overarching themes throughout the poem are consumerism, capitalism, and greed. The poem describe the poet’s journey as he goes through a mental and implied spiritual metamorphosis firstly getting annoyed with his student, wanting to tell him “how full of shit” he is, then recalling his dream, then recalling a quote by Karl Marx, “I was listening to cries of the past when I should have been listening to cries of the future,” and lastly empathizing with the student while imagining the metaphorical nightmare.
Another main grouping of themes is dreams, nightmares, waking life, dream life, sleeping, and lucidity, specifically, being aware that one is dreaming. The people in the drowning in the river could be compared to the laborers in foreign countries manufacturing goods for America while living in squalor, or Americans unhappy because of misguided values. The “you” in the pleasure boat is The American, or America itself, or the ideal of consumerism. In the poet’s dream, money is clogging up the father’s heart. The poet is actually helping his father by stabbing him. In the dream poem, the father thanks his son, and says, “And so I perish happily, freed from that which kept me from my liberty.” So, again, we have the theme of captivity. The subtle metaphor of America is money comes to the forefront. The poem in the dream becomes a dream sign, something in a dream which makes the dreamer realize he is dreaming, and the poet becomes lucid, which is similar to waking up in a dream. The poet thinks, “I am asleep in America too, and I don’t know how to wake myself either.”
Themes are paired with contrasting themes: older generation and younger, teacher and student, nightmares and dreams, communism and capitalism, anger and compassion, the material world, and the world of dreams. The young student bemoans the modern American consumer based value system, and as the teacher questions himself and learns, the student becomes the teacher. Marx’s quote “near the end of his life” implies Marx retrospectively thought communism was less than ideal. But, the poet wonders if capitalism is really so freeing as he questions if Marx would have imagined the modern American nightmare if Marx had been “listening to cries of the future.”
In the last stanza the poet speaks of you turning the volume higher in the nightmare. This is obviously a reference to television or listening to a radio. The sound could either be you drowning out the cries of the future, the implied screams of the people dying in the river, or the screams of third world laborers themselves, as if we somehow take a perverse pleasure in the pain of others by passively purchasing goods which we know are manufactured by those suffering in poverty, and in doing so are exhibiting a kind of complacent sadism. “America” is a complex poem, with thought provoking ideas, and interesting themes cleverly threaded through the fabric of the piece.