lucid

Friday, 15 January 1971. 1,488-N1. 36 second read.



From the front door of my Cubitis home, I walk onto the carport at midnight. The house is high in the sky inside a tornado.

A bird as tall as me flies straight through the spinning debris beyond the carport.

His appearance is that of a sparrowhawk. He lands on the edge of the east end of the carport but remains still after ruffling his feathers. I sense he is here to help me. He wears a crown. I have a deep feeling of peace and timelessness.

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Note: There was a minimal influence from the Woggle-Birds act from “Jack and the Beanstalk” (1967) and the twister scene from “The Wizard of Oz” (1939).

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My dream begins with the physiological influence of vestibular-motor sensations (from REM atonia). It changes from spontaneous vestibular-motor responses to controlled and more defined.

A crown appears with increased dream state awareness. It reveals higher metacognitive management of the dream state.

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Morning of November 29, 1970. Sunday. (Last checked and clarified on Friday, 12 January 2018.)



In my dream, I had been wandering around in my backyard in Cubitis, seemingly around nine o'clock on a clear morning, becoming more and more lucid. I start to think about taking advantage of this state and enjoying physical interaction with Lisa (who is not present in my dream at any time). I marvel at the clarity of my dream’s environment, finding its realism stunning and wondrous.

I am eventually seated on the ground inside an area within the unfinished part of the large cinder block shed (which my father had built and added to over time), which does not have any roof or walls. I am seated near one of the cinder block columns that is to my right (west). As I am sitting here, facing south (looking in the opposite direction as the main part of the shed) and feeling happy and expectant in my anticipatory musings, I turn slightly to my right to look westerly towards the carport and notice an unfamiliar stray dog walking around and sniffing the ground. I believe it is possibly a black Labrador Retriever. The dog huffs upon noticing me, but does not bark.

I become extraordinarily frustrated. “You dogs are always ruining my dreams,” I bravely shout, with the tone of my frustration dominant and echoing throughout the dream space (though still with my young boy’s voice), expressing my irritation at the presence of a dream state distraction and potential virtual threat and as such, my attention drawn from my previously hopeful lucid intent of feminine contact (even though I spent a lot of time with Lisa in real life).

After a menacing deep growl, the dog teleports from just beyond the east end of our carport (a good distance away), to reappear right behind me. The dog jabs me in the small of my back with his hard nose, triggering the deep tickle spasm in my lower back, which causes me to spontaneously jolt awake. I was annoyed at having such a vivid and well-rendered dream truncated.

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Questions Answered:

What does the aggressive unfamiliar dog in this dream symbolize? The dog is this dream’s RAS (Reticular Activating System) factor. RAS is that which is responsible for regulating wakefulness and sleep-wake transitions. (I had no fear or wariness of dogs in real life and no expectation of such an encounter.) On the one hand, the dog’s assumed lack of obedience symbolizes my dream self’s expectancy of my dream’s non-compliance with my conscious self identity’s desires and potential will. On the other hand, by exclaiming, “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”, I lucidly caused the dog to serve my negative expectation of this dream’s outcome so quickly, that the dog teleported and triggered the waking jolt in my lower back.

Why did you shout “You dogs are always ruining my dreams”? The reason for me negatively addressing the RAS factor was that I was already familiar with the nature of the dream state (and its many different levels) at this time - even as a child (though had not mastered it yet as I mostly have now, though it depends on the level of unconsciousness and the particular stage of the sleep cycle). RAS had already been rendered as dogs in a number of dreams by this time, again, symbolizing my dream state not submitting to my will, analogous to an untrained dog. This sort of aggressive RAS symbolism eventually diminished as I got older and learned more about dreams. (In fact, in a number of recent dreams, a passive German Shepherd had appeared, standing near a a thin vertical pole displaying a pennant at the top, symbolizing my dream’s obedient nature within certain levels of unconsciousness.) Still, RAS does get aggressive and dominating at times (though is often personified rather than being rendered as an animal), as waking is a biological necessity.

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Morning of October 3, 1970. Saturday. (Original date validated.)



Brenda W (female classmate and friend, as well as an in-dream precognitive “stand-in” for my wife-to-be) is supposedly kidnapped by aliens. I go to find her (somewhere in Arcadia on or near Imogene Street) and “wake up” within my dream to discover that I am aboard a spacecraft and had also been kidnapped. It is apparently the one from the movie “Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster” from 1965 (often misremembered as a child as “Frankenstein Vs. the Space Monster”) but looks a little more like the one from the original “The Day the Earth Stood Still” on the outside. The “space monster” is also the same (but is somewhat orange), but is kept in a cage next to Brenda. She is still threatened by the creature as he reaches through the bars of his cage and through the bars of her cage.

The “aliens” (who appear mostly human as in the movie and are basically the “same” ones) attempt to render me unconscious again, trying to get to me when they see that I am awake and walking around. However, I “defeat” them by waving my arms about and somehow outrunning them in the fairly small room. The “monster” somehow escapes from his cage, but I chase him around in a circular comedic scene so that it is not obvious who is chasing whom (much like a scene from the little “magical” walking cane dream relating to the two escaped prisoners). Eventually, he jumps from the spaceship (which is seemingly flying fairly high in the sky above a forest) through a wide doorway. The other “aliens” have also apparently left the spacecraft. I wonder about how to fly the spacecraft for a time and worry about crashing. I look more closely at the forest below. I let Brenda out of the cage and think about jumping.

We do jump - I go first, but I quickly and safely land on the ground - a sidewalk, actually. The forest was a small-scale miniature fake forest and the “spaceship” was only a few feet from the ground and held up near the center by a large post. I then motion for Brenda to jump out as she looks down curiously and with a bit of dawning amusement. It turns out we are near an entrance of the shared (elementary and high school) large cafeteria; the middle area near the longer covered sidewalk that extends over the school grounds. The “aliens” and “monster” were kidnappers in costume and makeup it then seems, but rather of an elaborate setup - perhaps being a part of some sort of hidden camera show, but I still sense they were criminals with intent to do harm. I do not see anyone anywhere and we are apparently safe from further confrontations as my dream eventually fades.

This was a very amusing DDR experience. Brenda was kidnapped, followed by my own kidnapping. Here, my emergent consciousness is associated with the “solving” of the alien event as a mundane fake created and utilized by the kidnappers. It was only a short jump to the ground (rather than the falling transition in many dreams). This is one I made into a story, though from an adult’s point of view, it was probably obvious from the beginning.

Night of September 21, 1970. Monday.



This is a long repetitive dream relating to a search (by unknown people, mostly) for Lucille Ball from the “Here’s Lucy” television show. This is the episode where she is skydiving and there is ambiguity in my dream of whether she is still in the air somewhere somehow (not logical of course) or had crashed through a roof.

Lucy herself does not even appear at any point in my dream. Instead, there are several scenes where I am on the roofs of buildings, somehow floating over roofs, and one scene where I am hanging from the ceiling after apparently crashing through the roof in a parachute, though this also seems like some sort of odd pretense (solely using some sort of mental power instead of by physical effort to suddenly establish the scene and setup and my placement, though without lucidity) in attempting to show others what might have happened to Lucy.

In a few segments of my dream, I am only seeing the eaves of roofs and there is also something about television antennas that do not seem to be working correctly (and a few people are even using their televisions to help to find Lucy as if a television had built-in “radar” or a way of scanning the sky). Most of the imagery of the roofs becomes a bit convoluted (almost like a flight of steps in a couple areas) but there is eventually mist and oversimplified (unrealistic) buildings as the main form of the setting.

Update Saturday, 26 March 2016: I can now look at this dream and decode it fully, as I see that it has the same basic metaphorical meanings of the dream state itself that is found in hundreds if not thousands of other dreams.

Included in this dream are:

The “failed flight” metaphor (or “something coming down from the sky”) that is not a negative implication at all but which simply represents the end of the dream (since flying itself - or in fact, contemplating or being aware of anything that flies or floats or is in the air - represents the dream state).

The mist has been a common feature in my dreams though mostly when I was younger. A mist or fog relates to the dream state itself which seems metaphorical for a dream being “not as clear as reality”.

The roofs that have somewhat of a staircase appearance in silhouette are a double play on “coming down”, as a staircase also relates to waking from a dream and whether or not you are closer to waking by going up or down depends on the dream self placement and perspective.

Breaking through a roof (or even parts of a roof being blown away as in a few other dreams) is also related to the waking stage as is breaking through a wall (more so a window) or even coming through a door (which usually creates a shift in awareness for me, though not always related to waking - but is sometimes a transition within the dream as it continues, making a dream much more vivid in many cases).

Antennas also relate to the dream state and the communication of dream self from threads of the conscious self, almost implying a dream being built in the manner of a television broadcast from the conscious self. A television is also a downsizing of the dream itself to distance the dreamer from direct involvement in a scene for whatever reason (and focus on a television seems to serve as both induction and waking preparation).

Sunday, 13 September 1970. 1,364-M1. 1 min 11 sec read.



A tornado approaches Arcadia, Florida, from the southwest in the morning. I do not consider it a threat to my Cubitis home about four miles north of Arcadia, but I wonder if it will reach my school.

At the end of the driveway of Kenny and Karen’s home; is an elevated podium where an unfamiliar dark-haired man of about 30 gives a cheerful lecture about tornadoes. He faces Highway Seventeen. A small crowd stands on the wayside. The man’s head and shoulders are about three feet above the audience as I watch from my bedroom windows. I zoom in on the scene. He uses a pointer stick on a picture of the “tornado” on an easel to his left.

The “tornado’s anatomy” picture is only a series of sparse horizontal lines on a white background. The simple diagram suggests a tornado’s shape, but I am puzzled by its lack of detail.

I think about how the tornado will affect my school. I find myself in my school’s playground. The tornado arrives but is only as high as a single-storey house. I neither feel its wind nor sense peril. I stand on the south side of the hexagonal merry-go-round, thinking I could save my schoolmates.

I grab the merry-go-round’s metal bar and run in a circle to counteract the tornado.

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Note: The end of Kenny and Karen’s driveway is where we waited for the school bus in some semesters.

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My dream begins with the physiological influence of vestibular-motor sensations (from REM atonia). It changes from spontaneous vestibular-motor responses to controlled and more defined.

A tornado approaches, but I know it will dissipate when I spin the merry-go-round. Also, I associate the area where we waited for the bus with expecting the vestibular-motor sensations of riding a bus.

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Morning of March 28, 1970. Saturday.



One of my favorite dreams, very long and with many parts, I had at age nine and this was a time period where the color of Pepto-Bismol sometimes dominated as a main feature (dreams only, not hypnagogic or hypnopompic visions). I am not sure why; I had not actually taken it that much. I tend to wonder if we had never had Pepto-Bismol in the house, if the features in my dreams would have been the same other than that color, because all the things that did have that color would not be remotely associated with that shade of pink for the most part. In fact, in this dream, the cane actually does seem lighter greenish-blue at times.

This time it was a cane with a small sliding switch on the top that activated special powers for me. It was shaped like a candy cane and was that familiar Pepto-Bismol color. A lot of major events occur, and my dream was probably an hour long, or so it seemed (although it is possible it was a series of dreams in one night, which were linked).

In the very first part of my dream, there are two prisoners looking out through a jail cell (I eventually associated them with “Hudd and Dini” from Cracked Magazine). It actually seems to be more like a cage, I suppose, as I can clearly see the scene as if it was inside a normal jail, although there does seem to be some sort of “outside office” to the east. Other people walk about and notice the criminals. However, at the same time, it seems to be taking place in the playground in the middle area of the southern side, closer to the fence (where beyond are normal residential homes).

Somehow the prisoners escape, and for some reason, because I am right there at the time, may be after my special cane and start to chase me. However, I chant “invisible…invisible…” and I both turn invisible and sink down into the ground (several feet). The prisoners are running perfectly in step with each other, reminding me of a scene from Alice in Wonderland or a scene from older issues of Mad Magazine (or maybe Scooby-Doo), with their knees lifted comically high in the air. Soon, I am above ground and actually chasing them. They realize this, and do a double take, but I still am able to get away by going through the outside wall of the auditorium.

I notice Brenda W (female classmate) is putting on some sort of marionette show, but is having a lot of trouble with the strings, and the audience is booing her. She is sad - but I become invisible to help her, and am able to move the puppet around and perform all the actions and such of the whole play. It mostly involves animal antics, with an elephant mopping the floor in a sort of Carol Burnett-like routine mixed with a scene from “Fantasia”. The audience is amazed and marvels at her show.

Later, I am at an area that seems to be a combination of a brother’s home (in Cubitis) and the principal’s office in school. I am marching around in my invisible state and making “booing” sounds and another boy my age (sitting on the couch) is looking terrified.

Eventually, along comes Ricardo Montalbán driving a taxi. He has the two criminals of the first part of my dream with him. He is after my “magical” cane (which has a “real” technological explanation for what it does). I am worried for a little while, but I surprise him, and float up through the roof of the taxi and escape.

I then end up at an older house with two floors and an attic on “King Street”. This part was amazingly precognitive in that is actually where I was living years later (in Wisconsin), including the street name - and the mood I then had was very precise (there was no way to know my family would move to Wisconsin again at a later date or that I would feel just as I did at that much later stage of my life). Somehow, the cane stopped working and I was trapped as a “ghost” who could only walk around and haunt the place by knocking chairs over and such until someone came along and helped me. But I remained a “ghost” at the time. Not the greatest ending, but it was still a fun dream. There were several other parts that I did not originally write down. I know there was something about avoiding mosquitoes by becoming of no substance so that they just moved through me and could not bite.