dream fragment

Some decent dreams, at last!


#960:
Date: August 20th, 2010
Length: 7 minutes


I'm on (a much larger version of) my college campus, it's late afternoon, and we're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. A good number of people are still alive, as the infection is in its early stages. I'm with one or two other people, and as night falls, we decide to hole up in a nearby building. We end up in a kind of corridor, where we board up the windows, set up makeshift beds, and go to sleep.

Day comes without a disturbance, and we step out of the building. We have decided to head to the East, because apparently there are less zombies there. As we walk, we see many groups of uninfected people, most of them headed in the same direction we are. It seems that everyone wants to get to some kind of museum, where for some reason they hope they will be safe (I think we wanted to get there, too). After walking for a while, we reach the entrance of a large building -- the museum. A large crowd of people is heading towards it, and others have already arrived at the entrance.

At this point, I'm not sure why, but I ditch the other people I was with and sprint towards the museum. However, once I get there, I realize it's closed (or at least, the people inside refuse to let anyone else in). I look around, and see many people sitting down on benches in front of the museum: they all appear shocked and seem to have lost all hope of survival. Instead of staying here, I decide to try to get out of this place as fast as possible, spying a sort of hybrid highway/city street nearby.

I head towards the highway, and the dream starts mixing "reality" more and more with the world of video games. I have no car, but manage to run fast enough to jump on top of a red car. For a while I just stay on the car, but soon enough things starting getting frantic. My recall here is a bit blurry, but I ended up jumping onto many different vehicles, trying not to get myself killed in the process. At some point, I leap onto the back of a sort of tow truck with a crane. Everything is hectic, and all the cars/trucks on the highway are going very fast. The crane swings wildly, and eventually I jump off the truck onto some weird vehicle, I guess a kind of forklift on the front of which 5 people are standing. My landing causes part of the vehicle to dip forward, making the people fall onto the highway. I feel pretty bad about this, but soon forget about it.

After a few moments, everything starts getting even more crazy and confused. It feels like the highway is now on top of skyscrapers in a city. Two Apache helicopters appear in the distance, and start firing missiles straight at me. I dodge them, and shoot down the helicopters (I think with a rocket launcher?). After a while, I think another helicopter appears, and I take it down as well. A few moments later, a monstrous creature manifests itself on the top of a large building, and I fly up to confront it, armed with... a few toothpicks. The monster is a large, sort of round blob/jelly of a mostly beige color, though parts of it occasionally change tint. Out of its inside spawn several smaller, orangeish blobs, which I kill by throwing toothpicks at them, "popping" them in the process.

I realize that whenever I pop one of the small blobs, a sort of jellied eye appears on top of the giant one, and stabbing it seems to be the only thing that harms the monster. I methodically pop a small blob then hit the eye (it disppears after being hurt, each time), until I realize I only have one toothpick left. Instead of throwing toothpicks, I now have to use my lone toothpick as a knife basically. It works out OK, and I think I end up killing the giant blob.


#961:
Date: August 21st, 2010
Length: 5 minutes

As the dream begins, I'm in the passenger seat of a car my mom is driving, and we're entering some kind of parking lot. We stop at a booth, and inside is a sort of Indian guy. We talk to him for a while, after which we drive further into the parking lot. However, a female voice ends up talking to us, and things get strange.

Apparently, we're trying to park so that we can go to some kind of amusement park (Sea World?). The voice tells us that in order to get a parking spot, we need to go through a special process that involves killing ourselves, only to be immediately "reincarnated" in a clone that has a copy of our memories (except those from our suicide). I'm pretty shocked and afraid to do this, but my mom doesn't understand why I'm reluctant, and seems to be perfectly fine with it.

We end up in some kind of hotel, where I end up in a small projection room, watching a movie with a few other people from my family. At the end, my dad explains that the moral of the movie is about suicide, and that it proves that we should all go through the suicide/reincarnation thing explained earlier. I refuse, but everyone else seems to accept (my brother, my mom and dad, and some others I think).

I end up having to witness their suicides, just standing nearby seeing all this happen. I can't really explain this part very well so bear with me, but they end up in their own kind of "simulated dream" -- they all take on different forms, some looking like kids, others just like different people, and they all have this sort of ghostlike transparency to them. They almost seem to be acting out a scene, both aware and unaware of what they're doing. They walk out to a long sort of balcony on the 3rd or 4th floor of the hotel, and all lean against a barrier, looking down at the view below. Soon, a large wind starts blowing (even though this is indoors), and it is supposed to push them all over the barrier so that they will fall and die.

Just as this is happening and everyone is starting to fall, a truck bursts through a glass window on the ground floor and crashes into a pillar, hitting some of the falling people as well. It is being driven by Leonardo Di Caprio, but for some reason at times it feels like I'm in the truck, though I'm seeing everything from above. I don't remember much after that, except that all the people who fell died, and Di Caprio managed to crawl out of the wreckage of his truck.


I also had some dream involving soccer and a red-headed girl I was attracted to.

22.08.2010

Mass E-mailing (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

It was a "messy" night. I woke up a few times, with and without recall. I was very tired and I missed to write a couple dreams... Mainly fragments. I hope my subconscious ends to digest my new stuff on my business. One lucid interrupted by my cat.


Second:

- I was assigning jobs.
- I had to assign like 650 jobs.
- I prepared the MASS E-mailer script and I was going to send like 10.000 e-mails.

Missing dream signs:
- Unknown.

What I would have done if lucid:
- Unknown.

22.08.2010

Kids (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

It was a "messy" night. I woke up a few times, with and without recall. I was very tired and I missed to write a couple dreams... Mainly fragments. I hope my subconscious ends to digest my new stuff on my business. One lucid interrupted by my cat.

First:

- Five
- Kids
- Indoors
- Table
- Learning something.

Missing dream signs:
- Unknown.

What I would have done if lucid:
- Unknown.

I rebelled against my Mom. I don't know what about but I just watched a musical and there was a part where a college girl rebels against her grandma. So I think it went something like that. I even did an RC and the dream is a lot longer but left it for too long before writing this down. So yeah.

1. I'm following my friend MB at her college. She changes clothes into a very pretty dress, then goes into a local casino and sits down to play blackjack. She's doing all right, but I decide to log onto a computer terminal and anonymously transfer money to her account for betting.

2. I kill a childhood bully, Nick E, with an axe in the backyard of my college dorm.

1. It's a boring night at the research station, so to pass the time I lean my face against the window of my room and watch people come and go through the courtyard below. CA goes to do laundry, then John L and Joe C go out to find stray animals. They return to the kitchen, where my dad is present to tell tales from the hometown animal rescue. The rescue clinic was apparently so successful that it was able to "hire" concerned volunteers at a dime a pop. After this I false awaken into my bed at home. I get up to brush my teeth, but I don't spit right and swallow the disgusting toothpaste. When I look at the mirror, I see Chinese characters with subtitle translations that say "That toothpaste was disgusting." (A failed text and mirror RC if I ever saw one)

2. I'm walking through Cincinnati with P at night. We have been shooting at an Astro van with our guns to try and get it to explode, but nothing's been happening. We decide to head into a foreigner-owned restaurant for greasy fast food.

So I woke up this morning pretty let down. I only had two really minor dream fragments:

In my first dream all I remember was putting on some really long razor extension, those black plastic guards, onto my electric shaver and then beginning to shave my beard.

My second dream I'm walking down some sort of hallway to a gymnasium or auditorium. I am with a group of people. We go through these big double doors and are told to grab a bunch of orange benches and chairs and tables to bring back to a bigger gym for some sort of presentation. In the dream I remember asking myself 'Why can't we just present here?' and then that's really it.

I had to work hard to remember those tiny fragments. It was almost an hour after I woke up that I remembered those.

Right before i woke up...I was in front of my house and a couple of men with a needle were trying to catch me. Bobby Bens, his brother shawn and a girl i have no idea who she is, were watching this whole thing take place. they were with a guy in a black suit who was helping the guy who was chasing me. For some reason i wasnt running but i was trying to walk fast away from the man and he was doing the same. So he never caught me after what felt like 5 mins of just deeking and faking the guy out. i felt betrayed by bobby and because he was witht them and then i went inside and told my dad what they were doing and i said i was pissed off. i walk back out the door to go have a word witht them and bobby and the his brother and the girl are in my drive way, in a car. they explain that they were forced to stand there and they were always on my side. then i woke up

I'm pretty sure I just had my first lucid dream. It seemed kind of long at the time but I may only remember some bits and pieces now, gonna try to get down as much as I can. And it's weird, it feels so foggy now. Was a very intriguing experience. There was another dream before it but I want to get down as much of the lucid as I can so I'm writing it first.

I'm trying to recall what it was that triggered the reality check. I think it was that I was laying in bed or on the phone with my wife and she said something absurd (I think it had something to do with her saying she was on her way home from class at university, and I quickly realized she doesn't go to school in reality) that caused me to quickly consider that this isn't real and pull a nose-pinch reality check. I was able to breathe like my nose was just a little stuffy despite the nose-pinch. There was an obligatory, "Holy shit, I'm lucid!" moment. To keep the dream from fading from excitement and to calm down, I closed my eyes and (for whatever reason) pictured a topographical map key. Feeling it was stable, I opened my eyes, did another reality check (marveling of course at how weird it was to be breathing through a pinched nose, and then started wandering my environment. I seemed to be in what looked and felt like my old house on Broadway. I was a little unprepared for my first lucid; I hadn't thought of anything cool to do. The first thing I did was go into the bathroom. I figured since I was lucid I might as well start playing around with how well I could control it. I went to the door of the bathroom and decided I'd summon something on the floor outside and close the door to see if it appeared; I arbitrarily chose cake, and then I sort of glanced up and back down and it was there on the floor, slightly stale and with a big slice missing--I didn't even have to close the door. Happy, I went to the big picture window out front and continued experimenting by swapping between night and day by closing my eyes for a second then looking at the sky. I noted some unusual mixed success, namely whenever I wanted it to be day or night it would literally only be just starting day or night (ie at dawn or dusk). It's a little foggy if there was something occurring between now and what happened next, but the next thing I remember was that I was quickly running out of ideas for things to do, so I thought, "Well, I've always wanted to experience sex as a woman, let's give that a try." So I went back to the bathroom (it's notable that the previous time it was the bathroom from the old Broadway house, but it was now the bathroom from my previous apartment on Oak Street), stripped down, then looked in the mirror. Quick comment after the fact, the mirror worked just fine for its purpose in the dream, but before transforming I started in my normal dream avatar--which is myself as I recognize but much thinner. I was able to transform myself by pointing to the parts of my body that I wanted to transform and focusing on them. I started with breasts, then moved on to my penis. I recall being amused/annoyed that as I was shrinking my penis my foreskin wasn't shrinking with it so I had to do that separate. I started to get a little impatient so I just waved my hand around in front of my crotch and looked up at the ceiling to try to speed things up. Eventually everything looked pretty good, wasn't perfect, and I noticed that at some point I had lost all my body hair without intentionally trying to, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do first with my new body when I noticed I sorta needed to pee so I decided to get that out of the way first, so I did. Just that was an unusual new physical sensation. There was some toilet paper sitting in the bathtub next to the toilet, so I grabbed some to clean things up a bit (since I was planning to shortly be playing around down there soon anyways); as I was cleaning up the phone rang and I answered it. The voice on the other end was some woman trying to tell me about how there were cloths in the tub that I could use for whatever but to leave them there so she could wash them later (I noticed here that it was hard to focus on what was happening now while I was on the phone trying to listen). I looked back into the tub and the toilet paper had been replaced by dark blue cloth. I shortly regretted flushing a few of them down the toilet. I checked the mirror one last time to see if things were still good and then went back out to the living room. I'm think there may have been somewhere here where I experimented with my new body, but if so unfortunately I don't remember it. Eventually there appeared in my house (as though she was familiar with the place) a thin, light-skinned black girl. Delighted to find another person to help me experiment with my new body, I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me. She seemed apprehensive; focusing on her I first removed her clothes then, noting of course that she too was female and thus would make proper copulation difficult, made her instantly grow a penis. She wasn't very amused by this, however, and she angrily stormed off to the basement. Shrugging, and once again bored, I decided to turn my attention on mentally recreating graphic-update remakes of old school video games I love in my mind for entertainment. I started with what I assume was Final Fantasy 6, though thinking on it after the fact the action doesn't match up properly with the game (though I specifically recall Terra's appearance). At some point this was interrupted with my wife calling, when she called what had been the video game scene taking up my entire stream of consciousness suddenly appeared as though I'd taken it out of full-screen mode on my monitor on my computer at my current apartment. I even had my headphones on, so I had to remove one of side of them to expose an ear for the phone like I usually do. I was annoyed at the distraction but answered the phone anyways. I don't remember the contents of the actual phone message, but I note again after the fact that it started to break my lucid concentration. The last part I remember now was going down to the basement where I found the black girl (who had now been transformed into some sort of small Pokémon-like creature) cuddling on a table with another small Pokémon-like creature. Saying, "Oh, so you'll have sex with him but not me!" and did my own storming-off-angrily upstairs and back to the living room, where I waved my hand and did some sort of mental slash across the table they were lying on and killing them both. My memory of this dream ends here, though when I woke I seemed to think that there was more non-lucid dream that came after this. I awoke just prior to starting this journal entry and did a quick reality check that passed, officially ending my first lucid dream.

Note to self: be wary about answering phones once you're lucid; it seems to help break lucid focus. In fact, I'm going to try to make an effort to start reality checks whenever answering and/or ending phone calls. I'm going to try to remember that the next thing on my agenda for practice when a dream goes lucid is controlling the environment; this time I kind of let the environment do what it wanted around me.

There was a dream sequence either prior to or leading up to where it went lucid. There was a long prelude to most of what I remember, but the bulk of what I remember was that there was this stretch of interstate that I would drive down as though I was in a GTA-ish sandbox type game and try to score points on this segment of highway. The segment of highway was kind of a long straight section with a curve off to the right. I'm thinking I may have lost more memory of this dream out of excitement for the lucid one, so maybe more will come back to me later.

22-08-10 Something about dreamers forum, Finding my dream name, telepathic communications with a new user, she asks me to put a program on my computer, this gives acess to game statistics, I thought it would avoid minimising the game if new message received, Niklas from WoW is there explaining to some wisehead that it took ages for a lot of people to find out that beer was his dreamsign and apparently mine too, although I don't recognise this to be true for me.

22-08-10 Something about a competition in exorcism versus a loner played by Sean Penn, kept travelling all over the country. Was somehow also a competition in dreaming so went to the dude's website and gound my dreams to be waay cooler than his. All I really wanted was to be better than this guy. I had a partner, can't remember who it was exactly. I do remember at one point paying extra attention to trees, but never enough to remind myself of a reallity check. Was there something about a graveyard as well, possibly some train traveling, man a bucket load of dreamsigns.

Dream change, it is Christmas and my entire family is together. The kids run around and look for presents on the parking lot outside the communal office and it is bright sunshine (!!!!!!!). They ask me if I brought presents this time, sort of refer to my sisters baby who at this point already is born. “I don't do presents, you all know this!” They then question both my cousins on my mothers side and for some reason especially Heidi is speechless and looks to me for support, I don't quite understand what it is she wants me to do, until she says “Dennis tell them!” They keep looking at her with question marks in her eyes. I say something like “Oh for crying out loud just give them a couple of years of it, they will get used to it”. The entire family starts laughing as we walk into the communal office.

21.08.2010

Fragments and False Lucidity. (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID FALSE LUCIDITY

Two, mostly fragmented. Some fake lucidity.

First:

I was in my room, however, it was darker than usual. I was with other lady who was not my wife. I think we were about to have sex.

I knew it was a dream and I could do whatever I wanted. I was not worried about anything. However, I did not feel like on my regular lucids and I neither reacted or though like if I was really lucid. I had no control either and no recall from waking. I was dreaming I was lucid with a vague realization about being dreaming.

As we were starting to have sex, I had a False Awakening. I was in a store with my wife and then we were at home. We were watching a odd Poltergeist movie. I recall Carol-Ann (the girl from the series) in a dark hotel, the ghosts were like made of white vapor.

The scenery changed... more fragments. I accomplished a secret mission and I was going to be granted other one. I was wondering if I would need a gun for the next one.

Missed dream signs:
- The False Lucidity.
- The False Awakening.

What I would have done if lucid:
- Unknown, too many fragments.

Had a bit of trouble remembering my dreams in the morning. I wrote one when I woke up at 5ish but it came out pretty incoherent. I have no idea what this means:

And suddenly I'm tagging along as I follow someone else down what appears to me to be a dream room.

When I woke up in the morning, for good, I had to walk around and really try to remember what I dreamed about. Normally I woulda thought that I wouldn't be able to come up with anything but I managed to remember two more:

I'm visiting some sort of house out in the middle of nowhere where a bunch of people my age are living or at least partying. I'm there to visit and i don't quite fit in. I have a journal I keep with me where I write my secrets and personal stuff. This place is at the end of a very tall hill. Leah is there I think.

I remember at some point we are all in this big open hot tub area that is surrounded by nothing but glass.

So when I finally leave I forget to grab my journal and i am very worried that someone might read it. So I call Leah and ask her to grab it for me.

I'm visiting my mother on what appears to be a mostly abandoned farm. I don't think it's hers but it does seem like she is vacationing there. It sounds like something my mom would do. I walk into the dark grass and there she is tending a bunch of plants that are on a big table. She says something to me but I'm not sure what exactly.

Suddenly I'm in some sort of office building and there seems to be some sort of jurrasic park inspired ride there. It looks like one of those kid roller coasters that take you by little scenes from the movie to try and scare you. I figure I have nothing better to do so i hop on. The ride begins right away and I'm first taken to an exhibit with a raptor. I force myself to scream and laugh and to make it sound like I'm having a good time. I don't know why.

I'm taken by a few more exhibits before I decide this is too lame for me. I hope off of the ride and begin to hoof it outta the building. I don't know why I'm completely alone.

This lucid dream was really close to my 3rd one. I think my LDs are starting to get more frequent now. I am so excited!

Some notes about the dream:
FOR THE 4TH TIME! This dream seemed like a normal dream, but I felt some of it, and I remember feeling the RC. Again, I didn't have COMPLETE control over my actions. This seems to always happen in my lucid dreams. Isn't it true that DILDs aren't as vivid as MILDs or WILDs?
Anyways, here it is.

I was walking down a familiar street in our downtown. I remember it like I WAS lucid from the beginning. I thought to myself, "Well, this is weird. I thought I was asleep..?" So just to make sure it was a dream, I RCed. I was dreaming! I love the way plugged nose breathing feels. Like I said, some control. The dream was a little blurry too. Since I fell back asleep after I dreamed this and I was too lazy to write in my DJ, I can't recall the second part of my lucid dream.

I'm not sure if I tried to fly or not, but I went over to what was supposedly, my friend Mike's house.
I think I teleported or something. I can't remember. I remember being in the back of his house. I tried to remember my dream goals, but I couldn't. I simply didn't know what to do, so I decided that I'd walk around. (See, it's things like this that your not prepared for!)
I saw Mike's pool. To me it looked almost like a hot tub. Well, it was as small as one. I saw Mike and some other people, but I don't really remember them.

I turned around, and I saw this gigantic swimming pool. It could have been 14 feet deep. Um.. I guess to show off; I tried to fly. I closed my eyes, jumped up, flapped my arms; and to my disappointment I was still on the ground. I guess I just didn't believe. So I closed my eyes again, really believe I could fly, jumped up, then flapped my arms. I opened my eyes and felt myself hovering.. sort of. I was about 3-4 feet in the air. And as far as I could tell, I was gliding towards the pool.

I glided towards the water and splashed in (almost like a goose, lol). I felt the water and saw all the droplets like it was in slow motion, beautiful. This moment was also embarrassing. I think I got out of the pool, but I wasn't so sure. Just to check to see if I was still lucid, I did another RC. Ahh. It felt great. I wasn't so sure on what to do next, so I started spinning. I reckoned I would start fresh from a different place. But it didn't work. I must've needed to close my eyes or something.
I can't recall what I did after this, but there was another whole half of the dream that I had forgotten.

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID PRECOGNITIVE

Around 0:00 GMT

Nudist beach
Was at a beach with some friends and some people were passing by on the beach, completely naked. I commented with my friends that I didn't know that was allowed on that beach.
[It seems it was precognition, because today I received an invitation from a friend to go to a party at a nudist's beach. I don't think I'm going.]

At 2:40 GMT

Dry riverbed and fries at a snack-bar
Missed the beginning but was crossing a very dry riverbed, thinking that a torrent coming down at that moment would kill me. Some friends were waiting on the other side, which was a hill. [Then a gap] We're at a snack bar on a line choosing what we want to eat. Everybody is choosing fries. I think I shouldn't but end up asking the same thing. I remember it was around 7 EUR all together and I want to pay with a 50 EUR bill. The cashier says she has no exchange and I need to look better and find 10 EUR on my wallet. Then I struggle to get all the coins in the wallet.

Apartments with glass walls and a horse
[Then another gap.] I find myself inside a building, I'm in the hallway and the walls have horizontal glass stripes so I can see to inside the appartments. They are luxurious. Then it gets absurd and I only remember there was a horse in one appartment and my mother discussing with me this was not good - for the horse, I guess.

At 3:50 GMT

Walking house
I'm inside a walking house (ever saw the Walking Castle, from Hayao Myizaki? It was similar). The house stops walking on a hill, everything inside the house is therefore in a steep angle. My mother is the kitchen cooking chickpeas and cabbages. I look for the toilet. I find a big one,with white tiles all over. There are two condoms on the floor, apparently not used. I think I should put them on the garbage, so I pick them up. Then my former boss enters the toilet and I feel embarassed. I explain to her that I was just going to put it in the garbage but she couldn't care less. She just asks me "I need to know if you are working for any corporation." I was "What??? No." Then she kept asking questions but I don't remember anything else. It felt totally absurd and the dream collapsed.

At 5:00 GMT

A secret dream
I had a full length dream, but it's personal so I won't talk about it.

At 7:00 GMT

School/college
I'm with some more people, walking down some street in a strange neighbourhood. We're late for something and apparently I'm the only one who knows where we are going, but can't really remember what it is. I just keep going looking for something familiar. I find the place, it looks like a school. We enter a huge large hallway. Lots
of small children playing and chatting. One little girl touches my butt and I think "Kids don't respect me. They've always treated me as if I'm still one of them. Not even now that I'm almost 30 years old, they don't feel intimidated."
Later I'm in an amphitheatre on a class but no longer with kids but college students. My boyfriend is by my side and one of my old colleagues and friend of mine is in the middle of the room. He is teasing the teacher, who is what I would call a "cougar". He is being ironic about something but she takes it personally and considers he is flirting with her. She gets blushed and leaves the room for a while. When she comes back she has a bigger cleavage and she is clearly flirting with him now. I laugh.
Later I'm on the common room, lot and lots of students, they all look foreign, all blond. I sit by the side of a guy but his girlfriend looks at me with piercing eyes, so I move on. I go up some stairs outside and enjoy jumping around over a metallic structure, that seems to be some strange sculpture but kids use to play.


Another secret dream
I had another secret dream that I won't share. Sorry.

Visiting a foreign city
I'm with my father in some foreign city. He never travels with me, so he was very excited to be there with me this time and insists we must take pictures to remember that special day. We see a structure near a harbour, that is really cool to photograph but he is not getting the right angle, so I tell him to sit there for a while and I go some other way to see it from another angle. On my way I find a very nice pink building that is the Embassy of Switzerland. I still don't know what country we are, but the sign is in English. In front of this embassy, on the other side of the street, there's a kind of fence in stone or concrete and below is a river or canal. I lean against this fence to take a picture of the embassy building but a guard comes and says it's not allowed, so I say ok and move on. Almost reaching my father again I pass by a cute house with a lovely balcony or porch with beautiful plants. I try to get a picture when I see a couple inside and they seem to be arguing about something. The girl gets upset that I'm taking a picture so she starts making grimaces and poses. I realise she is speaking german, but the guy seems to be portuguese. They ruin my picture so I go get to my dad. [Potentially a precognitive dream, to be confirmed in the future.]

After waking up from a short sleep time, I dreamt of my cousin who is in Florida. She had recently succumbed to a stroke which left her right side somewhat affected. In my dream she was just coming home from the physical therapy in the hospital. I saw that her right side, in my dream, was affected with slurred speech as I expected she would be. We hugged each other as in consolation for her situation and mine as I have been stricken with Multiple Sclerosis. I felt as though there was a reaching out between us through time and space or it could be a notice of things to come in the near future.
As a side note, I have an affinity for Nostradamus