nightmare

Dinosaurs Must Die

AT was at some day camp. I think I was a counselor or something. The building's insides were a friendly white with a pale blue rim and there were kids running around everywhere. I went to a room with 2 of my friends, peter and another. This room looked a lot like my old room and the lights were off. We were joking about knives and while they were taking there's out to brag about I just felt that mine was in my back pocket. The lights were off but there were tons of ambient light. I turned around and saw a shadow of someone holding a formidable blade coming from the bathroom door. I laughed uncomfortably. I halfway try to get the others to shut up but they keep talking. Out of the bathroom busts a veloceraptor my height and rushes towards Peter. The other friend is no one where to be seen. The raptor bites peter and he started to cry. It looks at me and rushes. After taking out my knife, trying to stab in in the face, and my knife falling from my grip, I catch its head in my hands and its jaws, annoying close to my face, snap wildly. I, push back, diving to the floor and taking it with me. I then couldn't think of what to do so I started bashing its head against the tile of the bathroom. I kept doing so until I felt its brain start to leak out of the back side of his skull. Finally, I stopped, put the head down and watched. After only 5 seconds or so, the still body reanimated it self with fierceness. I ran out of the bathroom, and while closing the door, caught its head within the door and the doorframe. I pull hard, watching it writhe, until its head popped off and fell to the floor. With that I ran out of the room.

Next I can remember, I went out of the building, found a red sports car and started driving fast. I was in a heavily wooded area with an established highway with enough traffic, I had to weave. Soon from the forest a giant t-rex came out and started chasing me in the car. I arrive at a building and run in. It's a giant court room. When I say giant, I mean that instead of pews or seats for people to watch, there's a balcony of unimaginable space. Everything was elevated seriously high and everything had stairs that lead up to it. It went so high that when I made it up the stairs to the lowest thing, the judges chair and defendant seat, I was just to the top of the T-Rex that just busted in. There were others in here with me, all just as scared. The first target was a blonde, it snapped her up easily. Next it went for me, but when I dodged it it just got whoever was behind me...a fat guy. Water was starting to fill in the room too...I climbed up to higher levels of the courtroom. Few people are following me and the T-Rex is swimming the the ever deepening water that's filling up the room. We get higher and higher in the balcony and then at one point I'm climbing up onto a rotting wooden banister left unkempt at the nosebleed heights. The water stops and somehow I get the Idea that I could do this forever. But then I remember...This T-rex is a reptile, which means it'll lay eggs, and those will come after me...This was a horrible realization.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I woke up just before 5:00 A.M. last night and was disappointed that I'd slept through most of the night, couldn't remember any dreams, and wasn't going to have time for another full sleep cycle before the rest of the house started getting up at 5:30. I decided to try to go back to sleep anyway, focusing once again on MILD affirmations and visualizations. It worked.

At some point between 5:00 and 6:40 [when I woke up for real], I have a false awakening where I'm in my current room and my bed is parallel to the closet doors [not perpendicular to them, as it is in reality]. I'm lying on the floor between the bed and the closet, all tangled up in my blankets. [I'm not sure when this happened relative to my other dreams, so I'm just sticking it here at the beginning.]

I'm looking at the results of a Google Image Search for something involving the terms “japan” and [I think] “front.” Almost all the photos that are coming up are of cherry blossoms, but one of them is of autumn leaves. I say something along the lines of, “There are about ten hundred billion pictures of cherry blossoms, but almost no pictures of the leaves.”

The next thing I know, I'm lying on my back in a wide expanse of grass. Several big, flat leaves in bright red, yellow, and green gently float down onto me from the nearest tree. The sky is blue and the weather is sunny, clear, and calm. There are trees spread out all over this grassy area, all with leaves that are turning autumn colors. Somewhere in here, I recognize that I'm dreaming, but there's no specific moment that triggers this realization. Saito is there with me, and I want to show him a seed pod from a magnolia tree. So, one comes rolling down the hill toward me, and I catch it. It's bigger than it would be in real life, and I say so when I show it to him. He says to me, “It's your mind.” Indeed; by now I'm not only aware that I'm dreaming, but I've caught on to the fact that this is my mind's rendering of what autumn is. I look around for an acorn, but find none. I say, “Of course there aren't any acorns – all my trees are are liquid-ambers.” [That's because that's what most of the trees in the neighborhood where I grew up were.]

This big, tall, flying guy in a blue costume with matching blue makeup, who looks like he came straight from a Cirque du Soleil production, comes and lifts me up in his arms and flies away with me. As I'm being lifted off the ground, the thought of hot-air balloons crosses my mind, and [for some inexplicable reason], I ask myself, “Which city in Canada is the balloon city?” The blue flying guy flies us through a series of very large, rectangular rooms with movie projection screens on all the walls and the ceiling. At first, the screens are showing immersive views of natural vistas in Canada, accompanied by some appropriately dramatic and inspiring music that I don't recognize. I'm not afraid, because I recognize that the movie screens and the guy flying me through them are all part of the Disney theme park attraction I'm now on. The attraction is kind of like Soarin' meets the CircleVision movie at Canada's pavilion in Epcot. The film footage is filmed in a style very much like that of Soarin'; it's obviously intended to make it look like you're flying, except that the shots are designed for the big rectangular screens. The film in the last room of the attraction shows the transition over the border into the U.S., and flies us over Mt. Rushmore and then under a waterfall projected on the back wall. We go under the waterfall by going through an opening in the wall.

Once I'm through the opening, I'm standing on the ground, and the blue flying guy is gone. I recognize the place where I'm standing as the interior of the Snow White's Scary Adventures attraction from Disneyland. There are no ride vehicles anywhere to be seen, though. The Evil Queen is just a little way in front of me. I approach her, and she turns around and says something scary [just like on the real ride]. I scream really loudly and high-pitched. For a few moments, terror completely overtakes all my awareness. While screaming, I think, Wake me up! Wake me up! hoping that the dream will end. [Remarkably,] It doesn't this time. I finish screaming, and observe that the dream hasn't ended, I'm still standing there, and the Evil Queen is also still standing there, turned to face the path where the ride vehicles should be, but is now motionless and silent, as she has finished saying her prerecorded phrase. So I start punching her in the face. I do this repeatedly, but I don't feel anything. While I'm beating her up, I shout at her: “You're an AAT*! I carry more complicated devices than you around on my back every day!” Which is true; she may be computer-controlled, but my laptop is much higher-tech. No longer afraid of her, I walk along the path and into the next scene of the attraction, where there is another AAT figure of the Evil Queen [this is the case in reality, too, but the track layout there is completely different]. This one turns around and starts to shriek something at me to try and scare me, but her words stop and peter out halfway through, because she can see that I'm not afraid of her. I continue walking through the scene. [*My personal shortening of “Audio-Animatronic™,” the robotic technology used to create characters in many attractions at Disney theme parks. I think I shouted more things than this, but this is all I remember shouting now.]

The next thing I know, I'm outside again, but surrounded by buildings this time. I decide to rub my hands together, only to discover that they're really hot. I realize that that's because my real hands are really hot under my blankets. That's the last thing I remember from that dream, but it seemed to take me a little longer to wake up fully. When I did, my face broke into a smile and then a laugh when I remembered the encounter with the Evil Queen. In reality, I had been pretty scared of those moments on that ride when I was a kid, and I still dislike them now. I'm really, really proud of this dream. I think facing something/someone you've been afraid of for a long time and standing up to it is quite an achievement, and a good, worthwhile use of the ability to lucid dream.

Non-Lucid
Lucid
Comments
Vividness: 4
Recall: 3
Hours of Sleep: 8
Food before Sleep: N/A

The dream started off pretty normal. Me and a few friends were walking back from grabbing lunch at school and were walking over to a table. I walked off and walked into a room. Two girls were in there. They congratulated me on dating their best friend. I asked myself who I was dating and since when. I shrugged it off and then the girls walked out. Not long after a book in the middle of the room opened and I heard screaming. Within seconds voices were popping in my head. Terrified I ran out and ended up in my backyard. My cat/dad started to crawl out of a rabbit cage with huge wide eyes and my neighbors dog looked like a dog from hell. Again I ran out and ended up running into my dad. He apologized for having such huge eyes and then I woke up. It was a lot scarier than it sounded.

~ 2 minutes

As me and my friend Neal were inside of a mall, a godzilla/dinosaur like creature began to attack by bashing away at the front of the building. This instantly made me lucid and i turned to my friend to tell him of the great news but he only looked at me like i had 4 heads... i then turned away from him and somehow created some sort of "laser-gun" that just appeared in my hands. i tried to inform my friend again but he still did nothing. I then jumped up and down trying to peak out a hole the monster made, however, I dont remember firing the gun at all. then i woke up...

(this was probably my most successful lucid dream being that i was able to jump insanely high and create matter)

October 24, 2010

Synopsis: A nightmare is trapped in the back of my house. Later, I become lucid and sing silly songs to praise my subconscious because dreaming is so awesome. After wards, a DC tells me I have to wake up, and acts as if he has authority over me!

Note: The other night I was thinking about how I should recognize that there is ANOTHER part of me that's really creating the dream. And that I need to give up this idea that my conscious self controls or creates the dream.

A Nightmare Trapped
I had a nightmare. Actually, I don't remember the nightmare. I only had vague impressions of it when I woke up. I remembered that several family members were involved, including my cousin cheskie. There was a female demon. And something creepy and gross involving human body parts.

I remember me and my cousin were trying to get away, but we didn't get far. This part of the dream actually felt long!

Later on, everyone is just chilling in the living room. When suddenly one of men starts throwing up! Being vomit-phobic, I quickly run out of the living room (and so do some of the younger cousins). He's running for the bathroom, holding his mouth! akljaal! He's gonna throw up on me, so I need to get further away from him.

I end up running to my bedroom. Then I regret doing that. Because the nightmare is trapped in the back of my apartment. The entire back half of the apartment is dark, with strange glowing lights. And a weird metal box, which I assumed the demon was in.

I don't remember what happens next, but I think I run out of the room and keep running all the way out of the apartment

Lucid and Singing to my Subconscious!
(cheese!)
The sun is shining and I'm lucid!!

I run across brick red roof tops, with another DC following me as a friend. From the roof tops, I leap towards a tree, and fly through its branches and green leaves. It felt nice to simply be lucid. I wish I remembered my lucid goals, but I didn't.

I ran around a ghetto looking suburbia. Me and my DC friend hid in someone's front yard, protected with a tall chain link fence. When the owner comes home we realize we've been spotted, and like little kids we run for it! I fly out a breech in the chain-link fence, and continue flying down the street.

I see a big building, it looks interesting so I go inside. It turns out to be some lame supermarket, filled with cheese and bored employees.

Usually I would think this is lame and look for a new dreamscape. But last night I was on a lucid high, and thought "wow! my subconscious made all of these details?". So I walked around in a lucid high just admiring all the random details of this boring supermarket.

Hidden in one of the isles was the tiniest little succulent I've ever seen! Complete in an equally tiny terracotta pot.




I held the tiny thing in my palm and thought..."Its perfect!". My subconscious didn't miss anything. It was green and plump the way any succulent should be.

At that point I start to praise my subconscious for having such creative abilities exceeding my conscious self. I started to sing a silly rhyme, somehow I managed to rhyme processed milk and manufactured cheese in the same sentence.

I can't sing worth anything and my rhyme was dumb! Even I knew it was dumb when I was dreaming

But to my happy surprise, suddenly all the bored looking employees break out in dance, and all together they chorus and repeat my rhyme. That was fun! I stay rhyming and singing to my subconscious for a few minutes.

Until I ran out of things to rhyme processed milk and cheese with

Once I stopped singing, the DCs went back to their boring routine as if nothing happened.

Before leaving, I wanna try it again! Ahem- I have to clear my throat and my voice cracks as I come up with some silly rhyme. All is quiet, and then, the entire store mirrored back my rhyme in perfect melody! Woah!

Happy and still lucid, I go outside and climb the big tree. I think how fun it would be to have monkey feet while climbing this tree, and like magic, I had monkey feet (I think at some point I took off my shoes). Then I try doing back flips, but I just ending up floating backwards instead.

Suddenly a strange DC comes up to me, behind him was a group of aggressive looking men. I think I recognize this DC as a repeating DC, a not so nice one. He's a tall skinny black man, usually wearing a business suite. And he's always a jerk to me!

He tells something I don't remember. But I remember him telling me "So now that you've learned what you were supposed to learn from this dream, its time to wake up."

What? Wake up? End my lucid adventure?

"No! I don't want to wake up, I'm having too much fun."

"Fine, I'll give you an extra minute and a half. And then, I'm ending the dream."

Who is he to tell me that he's ending MY dream? He starts counting "1.....2.....3......"

Oh man! I run down the street, determined to get far away from this jerk and prolong my dream instead. He sends his minions after me, but they can't keep up with my speed.

I wasn't worried about his minions. I was worried about his counting. Actually, it started to completely freak me out o_O. I didn't matter how far or how fast I went, his voice was still there, right behind me. Right in the back of my head!

As if there is no physical space dividing me and this DC, who positions himself to be able to end my dream.

I duck behind a bush and crawl into the thicket, losing the two boys. I can hear the men looking for me. I panic! What should I do? All the other DCs had voices that come from a distance, even far away if they were far away. But not this DC.

The men get closer to me, scared that they would try to bring me back to the strange DC, I decided this dream ain't worth it, and wake myself up

It was 6:30 am, hours before I needed to wake up!

My latest lucid dream was at night. I found it quite interesting because it was the first dream I can ever recall that was in a night time setting. I remember there were street lights that were cylinder shape and they almost seemed detached from the poles. I remember being fascinated by how beautiful they were. The way I confirmed that I was in a dream was by counting my fingers. I counted 8 fingers on my right hand and then started counting my left hand as if that was normal but I stopped myself and thought wait a minute 8 fingers, I'm dreaming. When I first heard this technique I was worried about using it because I thought it would kind of freak me out but I actually found quite humorous. Of course the first thing I did was start flying but this part seems cloudy and I seem to remember that I could leave the area I was in for some strange reason.

I also saw a small truck driving and I flag it down because I wanted to talk to the driver but when he rolled down his window to ask me what I wanted I kind of freak out and got scared so I told I thought he was someone else. After that I thought to myself that I need to be careful or I'll turn my dream characters against me. I obviously got this from watching Inception.

I felt myself starting to wake up which had been my biggest problem in Lucid dreams in the past, I would get excited and feel like I was literally sucked up into the sky and out of the dream. This time I use the spin technique to stay in the dream and it work really well. The spin itself wasn't at all what I thought it would be though. I thought it would be like spinning in circles on the ground like you do in waking life but instead when I closed my eyes and started to spin it was one of the most amazing moments I have ever experienced. The spinning motion was more like spinning in water but a much more free feeling, almost like being in outer space and there was these amazing colors like a laser show dancing all around me. During the spin I kept reminding myself that I was dreaming because I read you can come out lucidity from doing this. What's funny is when I did stop I was mad because I thought I had woke up. I was in the exact same surroundings but still thought I had woke up. So I again counted my finger and there were 6 fingers on my right hand this time. Unfortunately I did wake up after this. But even though it was short it was the most control I have had in a lucid dream so far and it was the longest I have been able to stay lucid in so far. Progress is a good thing.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Last night, my WBTB went on for nearly fifteen minutes, due to my trying (and failing) to figure out what it was that had gone thump and woken me up. I think it helped me attain lucidity. I should do WBTBs that last that long more often.

I'm bicycling along a sidewalk that winds through grass along the side of a street. Every so often, the sidewalk rises up and becomes a little bridge that allows water to go under it. It goes up-and-down and side-to-side so much that it's a little difficult to bicycle on.

I'm in a building with a group of my Literacy AmeriCorps friends. We're in an open, interior space that runs through several stories of the multi-story building, and has lots of staircases and landings in it. My LAC friends are standing around on the staircases and landings. We're talking about the party that's going on in a room upstairs. One of my friends says that, in order to get in, you have to bribe the guy watching the door in a “touchy-feely” way, e.g., by touching him in a sexual way. I absolutely refuse to do this. At some point during this conversation, I realize, “This is a dream. I can't really be talking to these people.” [I haven't seen any of them in reality since the program ended; we don't even live in the same state anymore.] Then, a bunch of unidentified guys come up a flight of stairs from deeper in the building and start trying to molest me and the other girls with their hands. As they begin to surround me like a flood, I realize this is turning into a nightmare, and try to leave the scene by closing my eyes and turning around. Once again, it does absolutely nothing. The guys start getting their hands on me, and achieve their goal of discovering where my erogenous zones are. I'm scared and shocked and I wish it would end, so it does. I wake up, and go back to sleep shortly afterward.

I'm in a room where I and three of my LAC friends, one other girl and two guys, have been staying. I find a guitar in the closet. A tall guy I don't recognize is also in the room. One of us asks, “Who in this room plays guitar?” and the other answers with “Lisa C.” and one or two other names. [I can't remember now who said what, or what the other two names were.]

I'm in a giant, room-sized aquarium. It's rectangular and about twelve feet from floor to ceiling, and all but the top three feet are filled with fresh water. One wall of the rectangular room is covered with small, enclosed plastic boxes, each containing a different kind of fish. You can open up the doors on the front of each box to let the fish out into the larger aquarium. I'm swimming in the water and can apparently breathe under it. I'm playing with the fish that are out in the larger aquarium, trying to get them to act out some scenario, but it isn't working out too well because there's this one carnivorous fish with big, pointy teeth that keeps eating most of the smaller fish. Eventually, it even starts eating another fish that's bigger than itself. I swim up to the very top row of little boxes, one of which contains a Blue Tang. I think about letting it out, but decide not to because I'm not sure if this one is a freshwater fish or not, and because I don't have very many of that kind. At this point, I discover that I suddenly can't breathe as easily under the water, and I realize that it's because the top three feet of the room are now filled with water, too. [Yes, I realize that doesn't make much sense. No, I didn't realize this during the dream, nor did I realize I was dreaming.] I go to the end of the room and start trying to get the door open so I can breathe the air outside the room. It has a wheel on it that you turn to open the door. While I'm still trying to open the door, before I can either drown or get it open, I wake up. [Dude. That was pretty cool. I wanna go back and play in the aquarium room again sometime.]

I cant remember what i was dreaming about before, had something to do with a lake, but anyway I was holding this cannonball in my hands and I realised i was dreaming. i was only slightly aware of it though and this thought just came through my head and i decided to wake up. i was suddenly in my bed in my room and it was nearly pitch black. I saw loads of images in only half a second, silhouettes of people, I can only remember the last one clearly, it was an eye. I raised my arm without wanting to and my hand had a yellow glow. my blankets wriggled around me and the speed of my breathing changed. I slowly began to feel my closed eyelids, I opened them and I was in my bed. I couldnt get back to sleep for the next 2 hours as i was totally freaked out.

This has happened to me before, i notice the beginnings of a nightmare and i realise I am in bed and blocked by SP, I try to move and i break out of it with a horrible rushing sound. This time it was more interesting and also a lot scarier.

i was running me and him noone could see us we were invisible to the outside world. we didnt look back at our lives we were just looking forward on how we were going to handle what we were about to face, cause deep in my stomach i could feel that i was going to leave everything, nothing to keep nothing to call mine, we slowed down to a stop and bent over panting gasping for air. then i saw it the biggest monster in the world you couldnt do anything but stop and stare. i could see my reflection in his eyes, i could see all his pain and suffering, and i thought to myself about how could someone be that mean, then i glanced over at him, the boy i was running with, he had the same pained look in his eye, who could be that mean, me. then i jolted awake sweating.

I am in a colorful, brightly lit house with winding hallways and lots of old furniture. I am looking for a checkers board that the kid from The Sixth Sense left behind when he was at this house earlier. For some reason it is very important for both me and the kid that I retrieve the checkers board and give it back to him. I walk into this circular bedroom with several entrances to it, and I look under the bed and see the checkers board with checkers pieces scattered around it. I gather up the checker board and pieces, and when I turn towards an entrance, I see about ten, foot-tall evil dolls that are standing in the doorway and staring at me. I am obviously terrified because I know that they are bent on my destruction, but I gather my courage and run through them. They claw my legs as I do so, but I make it past them and exit through a backdoor of the house. I am now in a beautiful, expansive garden behind the house, and my fear disappears. I start walking down random dirt trails through this humungous garden. I notice that in the bottom right corner of my vision, there is a GPS screen that shows a triangle for me and the various paths of the garden. I go down a path that branches out from the main path and it leads me to this small, colorful house the size of a shed. I remember growing up in this house at one point in my life, so I want to revisit my memories and see the inside of it. I open the door, and then I see a three-foot tall, grotesque clown doll emerge from behind the curtains from which it was hiding. It gives a menacing laugh. I bolt away from this house and don't stop running until I reach the parking lot where I parked my car. I get in it, peel out of the parking lot, and speed down the highway. On either side of the highway, there are cornfields and tree lines that separate the fields and run perpendicular to the highway. Three police cars come zooming up from behind me, and I notice that they are being driven by the evil dolls (somehow). Two of them accelerate and get in front of my car in order to box me in. I ram into the side of the police car to my front left, and it loses control and drives into a ditch on the side of the road. I swiftly do the same thing to the remaining two evil dolls, and I think to myself, "That was easy". But suddenly, an evil doll driving a massive combine emerges from a cornfield on the right side of the highway. Although it is a combine, it maintains the same speed that I am driving as it chases me (I am driving about 70 mph). In an attempt to lose my pursuer, I veer left and into the cornfield, but the evil doll in the combine follows me into the field. I drive towards the tree line, in hopes that I will drive through the trees while the combine will just crash into the trees because of its size. I make it through the tree line, and when the combine hits the tree line, it simply knocks down the trees in its path and continues to pursue me in the next field. I hear the evil doll shout at me, "I'll kill you eventually! It's only a matter of time!". The combine accelerates and gets in front of me, and is about to turn so that I crash into the side of it. However, I turn sharply to the right and drive around it. Since the combine takes awhile to turn, I am able to lose my pursuer and I get back onto the highway without the evil doll chasing me anymore.

So I was in this forest. It was all gray and gloomy looking. In a clearing in the forest were a bunch of stone huts. They were tall enough to walk in but you would have had to slouch to fit. It was spacious.
I was talking to a friend, I'll call him Spencer for privacy's sake. He was the leader of a Clan or Tribe. I was in it. We all lived in the huts. Well, we were talking and he gave me a direct order. I forgot what he wanted me to do. But I refused. You see, in this dream Spencer was cold and cruel (in real life he's sweet and charming) and he didn't like being opposed.
I guess either he wasn't one to risk an open fight or I wasn't worth his time. Either way, Spencer waited until I was turned to attack from behind. He had claws for some reason, and he pressed them against my throat. I guess he was meaning to kill me, or scare me into obedience. I woke up then, but I still felt his claws, and I could feel his arm pinning me to the bed. He was breathing against my neck, and a feeling of intense icy fear swept over me. I couldn't move for what seemed like ages. Finally I came to consciousness.
Later I learned this was Sleep Paralysis.

Lucidity: 7/10
Vividness: 6/10
Length: 20 Min.

I woke up and was looking at my bedroom door. I was completely lucid. And it was completely dark. Almost pitch black. Then someone came out of the shadows. It was a tall green cape with arms, legs, feet, etc. But NO head. That made me so scared. So while saying "no, no, no" a million times because I couldn't believe that I could have such a horrible nightmare.( I also tried to scream but nothing came out.) Got up. When I did I thought about it and he wasn't very scary. I imagined a piece of cloth on his head. And there was. Also that he had no means to hurt me. We shook hands and greeted each other. Then I was in a court yard and I was talking to some black guy. I can't remember what he said, but then someone else came in. Then we fought for some reason. While I was fighting I thought "wow, it's really dark here" and it was. It was creepy. For some reason I had a book or something and didn't want anyone to touch it. And of course he tried to touch it. Everyone did. By now I wanted to wake up, but decided I might be able to make it a better dream. So every once and a while someone would try to touch the book and I tried to stop them. Then someone did. I thought that the book would warp people to a different dimension. And it did. Then I went into that dimension. When I did I immediately looked around. I was on a long road. With weird things on the ceilings. And I was in a desert. Then someone said "look we already changed the store" or something like that, showing the store. Then it went back to my perspective. When it did I said "wow, this dream sucks" and stuff. Then I was on a field fighting over that damn book again. Sahara Winder fell over and looked hot. She was wearing sweat pants. So I went down to her and stuck my tongue up her ass. It didn't taste like anything and I didn't think about what was on it because I was dreaming. It felt exactly like one. The End.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while writing journal entry]

[Fragment] I'm at junior high school, going to class and learning what my class schedule will be.

The next dream starts out like a documentary about Canada. In the dream, I remember that I visited a city in Canada once, and my strongest impression upon arriving there was, “Wow, I'm in a foreign country!” [I've never actually been to Canada. These are most likely straight-up false memories, but I also got the feeling when taking notes during my WBTB that they might possibly have been memories of a previous dream that I'd otherwise forgotten about. Weird.] According to the documentary, Canada has a “Mexico City,” a concentrated population center of Mexican immigrants.

The dream then shifts from a documentary to an episode of “The Red Panda Adventures” that involves all of Canada being hypnotized/brainwashed into hating a man with the last name of Campbell. I remember a long text document [don't ask me why a dream about an episode of an audio series generates a dream image of a text document] that goes on and on about what a despicable person Campbell is. At one point in the text document, there is a warped and twisted version of the Canadian equivalent of the Pledge of Allegiance that also mentions his name and says something bad about him. [I was curious, so I looked it up, and it turns out that there is no Canadian equivalent of the Pledge of Allegiance. My mind just made one up. Cool.]

Woke up at 4:00 A.M. at the end of a sleep cycle and needed the restroom, so I used it, then took a few notes on my dreams so far, then went back to sleep.

I'm in a really big library with white walls and lots of light wood. The word “dream” crosses my mind somehow. [I don't remember whether someone said it, or I saw it on a sign, or I was just thinking about it; I think it was probably the latter.] However it happens, it makes me realize, “Hey, I'm dreaming! I did it!”

I decide to try doing a scene transition. [I don't remember how I did it, but] I find myself sitting in front of a computer monitor, which is displaying a command prompt against a black screen. The program that's running is a text adventure based on the novel Watership Down. I can't do anything right in it – I try entering a couple of commands, but none of them make any progress. Even the inventory command yields a response that goes something like, “You can't have an inventory with only one!” It means that you have to have more than one rabbit in your party before you can check your inventory. I quickly discover that the program is tied to the computer's clock, and that if a certain number of seconds pass without the player making any progress, the program just gives you a Game Over saying something about how you just got eaten (you, the rabbit, in the game, that is). After I get this Game Over, I think: “I don't have to sit here and play this text adventure just because I ended up here. If I want to, I can get up from this computer and go explore the building.” So I do.

I'm still in the library, because that's where that computer is. It's near a second-story interior passageway that's open and more like a balcony, overlooking the ground floor of the library. I follow the passageway over to where it ends in a flight of stairs going down, then descend the stairs, holding on to the handrails the entire way to keep myself focused on and grounded in the dream, and to make sure it remains stable. It works. The whole time, I'm marveling at how the sensations of walking, descending stairs, and holding the handrails are exactly like they would be in reality. The stairs have handrails running up the middle of the steps, but they aren't parallel to the ones running up the sides of the stairs; they're at an angle, so I have to go through a narrow space between two handrails on the last few steps of the staircase. I say, “Why did I have to design these stairs this way?”

I exit the building, and am outside on a dream version of my college campus. It's sunny and beautiful, and all the buildings are big and white and slightly old-fashioned [in real life, most of them are various shades of brown, tan, or orange, and none of them date back further than the 1940s]. Also, the St. Louis Arch and another, light-brown arch with some words on it in black, marking the entrance to some area, are there. [I can't remember what the words said now, but there were two of them, they were the name of the area, and they both started with S.] I go, “Ahhh, it's so good to be here.”

I notice that the beach, with its light-colored, soft sand, is down at the bottom of the cliff. I decide to try something. I think to myself, “When I close my eyes and turn around, I'm going to be standing on that beach down there.” I close my eyes, turn around in a circle (not too fast), and then open them again. I'm now on the beach, not quite at the exact spot I had been shooting for, but pretty close. “It worked!” I say aloud.

I stand on the beach for a moment, but the waves suddenly start coming up really close to the cliff, so there's not enough dry sand left to stand on. I decide to spin around again to go somewhere else, but this time, I'm thinking, “Just take me wherever.”

[In retrospect, that wasn't a very good idea.] I end up on the porch of an old, slightly spooky-looking house made of wooden boards, that seems to be floating on the ocean. It's not abandoned, though – there is a couple living in it. Also, I now have a friend with me – no one I know in real life, just a random, unnamed female dream character.

I look out from the porch to the east at the surrounding landscape and see a world that is ending. The sky is filled with thick, solid black clouds, with streaks of bright red and orange here and there because the sun is rising behind them. The entire landscape is flooded, and a jumble of disconnected buildings stick out of the water here and there. Some of them are on fire, some are falling apart, and one is being ruled over by some sort of dictator, whose enormous figure I can see looming over the building and gesturing with his arms in a way that means “work, you miserable peons!”

The couple who live in the house we're at start talking to me and my friend. They say that we have to get back to safety by sailing back the way we came. I think, “But we didn't sail here! We teleported!” I don't say so, though. [I don't know why not. Either I didn't get a chance to say anything, or I didn't want her to know about my newfound teleportation abilities, I'm not sure.]

[From this point forward, my recall is a little less clear in that I remember all the scenes, but none of the transitions or connections between them.]

The next thing I remember is facing away from the house toward the west, where there is a sort of path leading away from the house, but it's made up of a bunch of vines (or tree roots?). I try to get to the other end of the path by spinning around and closing my eyes again, but this time it doesn't work at all. I say, “Okay, if we can't do that, we'll just get there the hard way,” and start climbing over the vines.

Somehow, I end up on the deck of a ship, and there are waves coming up onto the deck I'm on, over and through the metal railing to my left. One of them doesn't look very big (it's about the same height as the railing), but it breaks right on the deck I'm on, tilting the ship over but not capsizing it.

The next thing I know, my friend and I are being escorted through the flooded landscape in a boat. There is a tank-like, armored boat with lots of guns in front of our boat, and another one behind ours. I take it they're there for our protection, but I quickly figure out that they're mostly just there for intimidation, and they're not even doing a very good job of that. There are lots of dangerous things trying to attack us, including exploding police cars, but we and our boat are passing through all of them as if they were air. What's really protecting us is a magic spell, one which, I know in the dream, comes from the Incarnations of Immortality universe.

I'm on foot, indoors, running away from something. I run into what appears to be a bathroom. I wonder if the protection spell is still holding now that I'm off the boat.

[I'm not entirely sure whether these last two scenes were in this order, or the reverse order:]

I'm a student sitting in a classroom, on the first day of school. All the other student seats are full of preteen or teenage Japanese girls, but the teacher is white. She explains that all we'll do in her class is make these little hat/hair accessory things out of tissue paper, which must be very trendy, because many of the girls are wearing them in their hair.

I'm standing on some rocks in the ocean, near the beach. I'm still lucid, so I think, “Okay! Text-messaging! Task of the month!” I go to take my phone out of my pocket, but then think, “No, better not do that here – I don't want to get my phone wet.”

Woke up and was delighted to have had another lucid dream. While thinking back over it, I laughed out loud at that last part – I was concerned about my phone getting wet? It wasn't even my real phone! :-D Then again, I realized that that makes sense: my dream cell phone would have been just as damaged by dream water as my real one would be by real water. After all, that's what I expect will happen when cell phones get wet.

-------------

Commentary:

Last night, I listened to about half of my binaural beats file at the beginning of the night, did a five-minute WBTB, did a lot of MILD affirmation and visualization both when I first went to bed and when I was going back to sleep after the WBTB, and had a new cardboard-square bracelet, one made with a smaller square of thicker cardboard than my first one, on my wrist the entire time. Something helped me have a really good, long lucid dream. I don't know what. How very unscientific of me, I know. I'm sorry, everybody.

On a more positive note, I'm getting a little better at this! I had more lucidity than ever before this time, and I thought about and actively tried out some dream control techniques while in the dream. I've moved out of the “what is this new world?!” phase now, and into a phase that can be characterized by these thoughts: “Okay, I get the idea of what lucid dreams are, but how do I shot web?” That is, I'm just starting to learn to use those dream control abilities. It was one thing to read about the spinning scene-change/teleportation ability, but as with most skills, now that I've done it for myself, I truly understand what it's like. Note to self, though: I should never spin around to transition to a new scene without first deciding what the new scene should be, because if I let it be random, I may not like what I get.

I finally had some recall this morning for the first time since the 12th.

I dreamt i was at some kinda cottage with some family friends. I remember having conversations with my friend and his step dad, but dont remember the dialogue. There was a storm happening and i saw a family from the neighbourhood on their boat, bracing for the waves from the storm. I was watching from a view that a camera would have if it were a movie. As if i was watching them from the middle of the water. The waves lifted their little speed boat and dropped it, rocked the boat until the middle daughter fell into the water. At this point i was at the "beach" and helped her fight off a huge fish that looked kinda like a 2' long black piranha or one of those deep sea fangtooth fish. And helped her back up onto the deck. Woke up soon after.

I had a short dream before and another one after this one, where i was on msn with Ninja telling him i dreamt about some guy, and he told me he did too. We compared details and it was the same person in both our dreams. But i cannot remember any specifics. (also, don't have ninja on msn irl)

16.10.2010

Tales From a Survivor (DILD)

★★★★☆

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

The undead are everywhere in this hell-forsaken, urban town. Myself, and three other survivors have managed to snag ourselves an old red Cadillac and are on our way to wherever we can find refuge. Of course, there's only one problem: the car is a stick, and none of us know how to work the damn thing. I volunteer to drive, since I understand the basic concept, and manage to get us moving after some work with the clutch. Unfortunately, I have no feel for shifting gears so every mistimed swerve around the frequent masses of rotting, staggering, corpses dotting our path slows us down considerably. And when you're surrounded by these monsters, the last thing you want to do is slow down.

______________

The four of us are in a dank sewer system, with another group of survivors, but the green, waist-deep, muk surrounding us is the least of our problems. Cornered, without a clearly defined means of escape, there's a school of zombie piranhas hot on our tail. It's like something out of a dream.

“This is your dream, after all. . .”

Says the small girl at my side as I become wholly aware of my situation. This is a dream all right, but I still want to get the hell out of here. Running out from under the large, boat-sized pipe above us, I jump up and pull down on the huge, mildew-covered cart that looks like it belongs on an ancient, over-sized amusement park ride. Motioning for everyone to climb their way out, I begin the journey myself. Halfway up, the cart buckles under our weight, sending me crashing down to the lower seats.

Great. Now I'm going to be savagely ripped apart and devoured by a bunch of undead fish!

It isn't pleasant.

______________

“What are you doing?”

“Making macaroni pictures for the dead.”

“Right,” I state, ignoring the clearly-oblivious, craft-obsessed people in the room. The whole scene is quite absurd really. Sure, this might be the last haven on Earth, but is this really the best my mind can up with after that whole tunnel fiasco? The computers in the corner of this modern, windowed atrium-turned-art-room catch my eye. Once there, I find a worn, yellowed note tucked under one of the keyboards.

“Arts and Crafts
1600 hours
We'll be there.”

Clearly, this is an extraction notice, meaning this area isn't going to be safe for much longer. I guess this explains the whole arts and crafts thing, then. I toss the note aside, and approach the tall double doors at the front of the room.

That's when the nightmare begins.

A demented, ethereal voice hisses through the room as the florescent lights around me dim and flicker menacingly. The voice continues its bone chilling speech, piercing not only my ears, but my mind. They're here.

Stepping away from the door, I locate my group, who're already moving back into the building, away from this madness. As I run to catch up, the tall glass window to my right shatters suddenly, and the stuff of nightmares, the source of the voice, falls through, blocking my path. It's all skin and sinew, with matted black hair on its misplaced, feminine head. Its arms and legs, if you can even call them that, are unnaturally long and bent at disturbing angles. To my relief, it doesn't seem to notice me, and moves sickeningly away, towards the screaming, as more glass shatters around the room, spilling forth the beast's tentacle-mouthed minions. I walk past it, but make the mistake of giving it one last glance.

Before I know it, it's on top of me, trying to splay my body into bits. Sighing internally, I grab the snarling head, and twist its neck, hard, fast. I'm met with resistance, but it's not enough to save the wretch.

______________

Turns out the escort was real, and here we are now, riding a Scorpion Tank through a literal sea of undead. I'm designated driver, once again, and sure enough: Tank. Beats. Everything. For fun, I blast holes in the ocean of bodies, sending bits of flesh flying into the cold, red, night air. The zombies fill out their ranks faster than I can take them out, but it doesn't matter to me. I'm driving a fucking tank during the zombie apocalypse for crying out loud. It doesn't get much better than that.