Blue_Opossum

Morning of October 23, 2018. Tuesday.

Dream #: 18,936-03. Reading time (optimized): 3 min. Readability score: 69.



As my non-lucid dream self, holding no viable threads of my real-life identity, I become vividly aware that I am sitting in the back seat, on the left-hand side, of an otherwise empty car in the Village Shopping Center parking lot in La Crosse. It is nighttime. I become aware that the car belongs to my brother-in-law Bob. (I have not had any contact with Bob since 1994, over twenty years ago.) There are only two other cars present.

An idea comes to my dream self’s fictitious mind that I should go to the driver’s seat and take the car back to the Loomis Street house. I am feeling very cheerful and confident. I get out on the left-hand side and go around to get in the front seat. (This is really about the typical initiating of subliminal control of the dream state and has nothing to do with waking life or “interpretation.”)

I get behind the driver’s seat. It is difficult to close the car doors, and I try several times. They are flimsy and not like real car doors at all, but are about as efficient as a dream can make something that stems from vivid non-lucidity. (It would have been better letting the dream play itself at this specific point.) I have no idea how to start the car. I have no key. I first consider that it starts like a lawn mower, but I do not see a recoil starter assembly. There is a small metal lever on the left side, below the steering wheel. I put my foot on the gas pedal and wiggle the lever. Gasoline starts pouring from underneath the full length of the dashboard. That concerns me. I do not want to incur the risk of something catching on fire. I get out of the car, and two unfamiliar men get out of their cars and come over to help me. At this point, as the men check over the car, I anticipate an explosion (an attempt at subliminal dream control), and I tell them to move away, but nothing happens.

I decide to walk to the Loomis Street house. On the way, walking east on the north side of Sill Street, I notice many boxes of magazines on the boulevard. It is a recurring situation where I realize I can take what I want (as I am deliberately though subliminally creating this scenario at its foundation, knowing it is a dream on one level), as it is left out for garbage pickup. It is also late morning. My non-lucid dream self does not register the impossible time change (as is always the case). I find a stack of magazines that are black-and-white collections of Nancy comic strips (by Ernie Bushmiller). Looking around more, I also notice stacks of interior decorating magazines, which I have no interest in at the time. This part of my dream comes from the lifelong practice of trying to initiate viable emerging consciousness threads by focusing on sustained reading skills of which do not ordinarily exist in the dream state.

I arrive at the Loomis Street house. My sister and mother are there and seem healthy. My dream self has no recall that they are deceased. A minimal thread of my conscious self identity emerges, but it is rather odd. I vaguely recall the concept of marijuana from Nimbin, yet I have no memory that I have lived in Australia for over twenty years or of my real-life status. (Additionally, I would never try drugs in real life under any circumstances, another factor that validates my dream self is not my true conscious self identity.)

I have some “marijuana” that I smoke with my mother and sister. It is rolled-up full-sized newspapers. There is trouble keeping them rolled up, and they burn with big flames, though I still suck in the fire and smoke. As I focus, I am astounded by my vivified perception, and yet I am not lucid. I start to become puzzled as I enter enigmatic space (a specific level of the dream state). I realize, though vaguely, that there is no marijuana and that smoking newspaper is odd.

I start to wake, realizing what my dream self had been creating. Fire is the emerging consciousness and often part of the waking process. The newspapers, at least as related to reading them, are the attempt to sharpen my perception, as I had tried to do in the previous dream segment, but it did not initiate lucidity, only revivification.

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