non-lucid

The bustling school corridors were filled with students exploring the myriad of clubs. As I wandered among them, my attention was drawn to a girl repeatedly playing an anti-racist message on a beatbox. The rhythmic chant lingered in my mind as I stepped outside for some air.

Amidst the displays, a large fish tank caught my eye. The fish inside were eerily still, prompting me to exclaim, "Hey, the fish are dead!" But as I looked closer, the water appeared, and the fish began to move slowly, as if awakening from a deep slumber. I could have sworn there was no water in the tank before, but now I saw it clearly, shimmering under the light.

Continuing my walk around the school grounds, a sudden realization hit me: I was dreaming. Emboldened by this awareness, I attempted to teleport, but nothing happened. Undeterred, I tried to transform a nearby tree into a goth girl. Again, my efforts were in vain, and the lucidity of my dream slipped away.

Determined to make the most of my surroundings, I approached someone I believed to be a friend. "Is there hockey here?" I asked.

She nodded, "Yes, we have country hockey." Puzzled by this unfamiliar term, I sought out the coach to join the team. His response was unexpectedly harsh, filled with insults. To my horror, he then began hitting a dog nearby.

Just then, another man, who seemed to be the real coach, appeared, brandishing a gun and behaving erratically. The situation took a bizarre turn as we all began chanting, "No 8 and his wife have been found and we are on our way to capture them" over and over again. The lights around us morphed into dramatic stage lights, casting an eerie glow on the chaotic scene.

As the lights dimmed and the chanting subsided, I awoke, the strange events lingering in my mind like a vivid, half-remembered story.

Lucid Dream:
I used MILD, reviewed my dream signs, and what I was gonna do lucid in that dream. Song “Hiraeth” by Clemens Ruh from prior dream kept playing through my head. Took me a while to fall asleep so I tried SSILD, which turned into WILD and I slid into light sleep paralysis. I asked for lucid dream, but nothing seemed to happen. I was super tired and felt awake in my bed. I assumed it didn’t work, but I worked up the energy to do a RC by looking at my hands. It took a lot of energy to move my hands through the sheets and lift my head. Lo and behold I had extra fingers, making this one of the most convincing false awakenings.

I immediately spring out of bed, and rub my hands to stabilize the dream. Everything is super vivid, however it feels like I have one eye closed so I spend a moment trying to regain depth vision. My first task is to control the elements. I’ve worked with water and wind before, and wanted to try fire for the first time. I lifted my hands in front of me and willed flames into being above my palms. It was really faint at first, but I imagined using my body heat/energy to ‘heat’ up the flames and they became more stable. Still fairly subdued, so I’d like to try again at some point. At that moment, a hyper-real, very physical/sensual man walked right up to me. I do not recognize him from waking life.

It was hard to deny his physicality and I could feel the warmth of his body and pull of his attraction. We chatted for a while and he wanted to engage in "things". We chat briefly about how it feels so real and physical, and if because of that it counts as much as in real-life.

At various points in our conversation I try to sneakily summon a wall that I can walk through since it is on my list as my second task, but unfortunately a wall doesn’t appear and the man is still a distraction haha. The scene shifts and I notice that the man now has the head of animal. This reminds me of my third intention which was to transform fully into an animal. I know it’s out of intended order, but seemed relevant for what was happening so I gave it a try.

I think of the leopard from my prior dream and feel myself morph onto all fours. I look down and see bright orange leopard paws and claws. They are little deformed and too bright so I spend a moment dulling the color and getting the shape right. At that moment I notice there is a wall in front of me. It seems like there are blue stained glass windows in the upper half, and I immediately think now's my chance to practice phasing through. In leopard form, I leap through, but realize I closed my eyes at the last second passing through so it doesn't count. I turn around and try again, but this time the wall almost flips aside like it’s a made out of flimsy plastic. I try one more time and make sure to keep my eyes open and focus on phasing through the wall fully and it works.

The whole time I’m doing this, the now animal-headed man is looking very confused and is trying to follow me back and forth through the wall. He ends up getting stuck on the other side after I phase through.

I end up landing into another false awaking, and do another reality check, but didn’t catch it that time so ended up slipping into a non-lucid dream.

NDL #1:
A group of us are setting a trap for the “enemy” but something about our plan fails and they find out. However the entity we’re up against plays “dumb” for us and sends someone to trip the trap anyways. This person turns out the be a friend. The trap is elaborate and involves him interacting with many different parts. I’m watching him from underneath some furniture so he cannot see me. Once he finishes setting the trap knowingly something changes - There is a brief moment where he is shown as a leopard running (in a new scene). Behind the scene I hear the song “Hiraeth” by Clemens Ruh distinctly playing and I wake up.

NDL #2:
I’m playing fiddle on the promenade next to a beach. I’m playing a slow Irish Air and a middle eastern family comes up intrigued by the tune. The handsome adult son walks up to me and says sounds it sounds like Afghan 'prison' music (not trying to be rude…more it’s just a lament and prison is a sad place to be). A friend pops in to say it’s Irish but originally probably British. Scene shifts to riding in the back seat of a car with the middle eastern man. He wants to play music so he brings out his instrument, which looks like a hammered dulcimer, but played with a short bow. He also brought a violin he can play. A friend is also in the car, and ends up borrowing the violin. I start playing Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór, and both the middle eastern man and my friend join in beautifully. He says this song is brighter than the first one I played, and I reply that is because I never got to the higher octave play through when he first heard it. Scene shifts and we’re driving through random parking lots. My sister, is in front of me now.

NDL fragments:
In a reoccurring area where conflict happens. Usually there are wooden arenas and hills in the area. In this particular dream I’m escaping a pursuer in a rock garden with a lot of cacti and succulents. I try and hide in the shadows to escape from the bright sun.

Advanced combat teams in circular looking submersibles are in a water combat course. They work their way up river firing projectiles from the submersible.

My mom is doing some sort of performance art in her office at home. There is a large crowd in the room so it’s hard to see the end, but her final act in the performance is to feign death. The crowd applauses at her performance and afterwords she goes with me to the buffet to get her sandwich.

Gamer Course:
I'm in a virtual reality simulation based on The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
I'm excited (maybe a little pedantic) about noticing all the inconsistencies.
The hookshot is the wrong color (using the blue OoT sprite).
The area is similar to Lake Hylia, which is not in Majora's Mask.
...
Later I'm in a warehouse obstacle course, still playing as Link.
I'm carrying a hoody, a bow-and-arrow, and a box of donuts.
I'm stressed out about trying to carry it all and also perform well in the course.
I'm firing disposable plastic teeth flossers as arrows to try and hit targets.
I come to a cafeteria-looking area, where there is a group of gamer-people talking about the course.
There is some discussion about Facebook games, and somebody who tells a story about playing Playstation 1 with Michael Jackson one time.


Lake Hylia in Majora's Mask, apparently. Hookshot is in the only correct position. Fight me.

Carport:
I'm driving home from somewhere with J and H from the Tots.
Eventually we pull into a carport. This carport has appeared in several dreams before, but I don't realize that here.
At some point I switch cars and I'm with just J now.
There is an old woman between us in the front seat who is trying to type directions into Google Maps on a dashboard touchscreen.
She is going slow, but we try to be patient with her. She eventually fails and gives up on it.
Now she is an Animal Crossing looking dog-villager outside the car, and we are looking at her from inside the car.
J calls somebody else to come are pick her up.

NLD #1

Some game and/or tv show and/or soap opera adds a character named after "Luis van Guido" and they have just revamped his character portrait sprite. He has X confirmed kills (or 4 hours to first confirmed kill). My "grandmother" is excited about the news since it's something the hip young ones would also be interested in and is trying to pull up his sprite on her phone to show us but is only getting the old one. I go on the internet to find it myself. He is a handsome looking man with short dark hair and a beard.

NLD #2

Some guy is streaming painting some plushies which each represent various internet people. Before he starts, he takes pics from an old flip phone to show chat. This includes an artist I follow. At some point he also video calls someone who cheekily answers while in the middle of driving which is alarming. During one point in the call they turn around in the driver's seat briefly and we're like "please watch the road!"

LD

FA? I'm in my bedroom and become lucid, nose RC to confirm. With some effort I get out of bed and leave through the window. But before I do, I figure I should look around since I rarely do that. My bedroom is an older style bedroom this time with dark wooden panel wainscoting and frames hanging on the walls. The dream is pretty fuzzy, not very vivid, but I don't think to try and fix this first.

I head out and try to remember what I need to do for the LD comp. I end up on the roof of some building in daytime wracking my brain for some memories. I eventually remember about teleporting. I try to find a door nearby, going down to street level in this dingy alleyway, and see a door that's more like a wooden closet door. Briefly, I consider making my own door/portal because that would count as a personal goal but I figure I should start simple instead.

I open the door and crawl inside. It's empty, there's a shelf near the top, and it's cramped. I close the door behind me and first imagine the outside changing, but then I figure this could be like Narnia instead. I imagine the back of the closet receding and feel around for a second door. I don't have a specific destination in mind, so I open it and end up in what looks like a Muji, with products on display and all.

I am a little disappointed. I try to think of a specific setting and decide on Harry Potter. I find a properly sized door and go through. I find myself on this flight of dark wooden stairs. I squint (everything is still fuzzy and dreamlike) and try to reason if this place could be related to Hogwarts but it looks more like a regular university, like a old New England-style building. I vaguely imagine an auditorium-like setting in my head and keep moving. I don't remember what Hogwarts actually looks like, which doesn't help.

I end up in a dollar store or bookstore with aisles of items on shelves. Instead of worrying about it further, I look around for some magic wands on the shelves and at first see something that might be it, but turns out to be some plastic toy bubble maker. Screw it, I'll make my own wand. I hold both my hands out and mimic "pulling" a long piece of wood out of thin air between pinched fingers, like stretching taffy, until I get a long wand. The surface of it is bumpy and uneven. I try to Wingardium Leviosa something nearby but it doesn't work at first. I remember I need to actually "craft" a magic tool for the competition and try "enchanting" it by imagining a dark spiral pattern onto it and pressing some purple symbols into the wood. There is an older woman behind the front desk that reminds me of McGonagall who gives me some advice about the gesture (down and up).

(after this point I'm not 100% sure I'm still dreaming, though I don't think I feel my physical body in bed?)

I feel a wave of something that might mean I'm waking up at this point and am ""daydreaming"" instead. Feeling a sense of urgency/doubt, I follow the woman's advice and try to levitate a product on the counter and it works (? unclear)

I go outside after and think about what else I can do. I'm not sure if I'm actually dreaming or imagining things right now. I call out for A. just for the hell of it as I walk past a dimly lit construction site through an underpass, the right side of me blocked off by a blue wall. He actually appears around the corner, holding a plate with a slice of cake and a strange two-piece umbrella where the handle detaches. I'm surprised and glad that he's there. I feel the pulse of "something" again. I ask him about the umbrella and he says something about needing to allow or not allow some other people from using it? Unclear, but it's a mischievous vibe. I realize the cake is gone. I want to ask more but then I'm 100% awake.

Dream #1
I’m driving with a couple in a black car, driven by some sort of butler. We enter a rundown warehouse area, long buildings made of white aged brick and sheet metal. It is a bright day with blue sky. The couple had bought a house that used to belong to a millionaire and near the warehouses. The house is on the right and is mostly white brick, and covered in some graffiti. There is gravel all over the ground and I can hear it crunch under the car wheels. A church is across from the house and it has largely open walls so you can easily see the people inside. It looks like some sort of mass is in progress. The couple want to engage in 'private' activities in their house, but it would mean in full view by the Mass, so they don’t. There’s an old lady playing the organ off to the left of the church. As I look around I notice there is also an Antique store in one of the other warehouses, which I’m excited to check out.

Dream #1
Get dropped off at airport gate by van driver who’s doing individual rides. Get to security and realize I’m traveling with a bunch of paraphernalia that I need to sort. There are a bundle of wood wands from my childhood that had been cut at the ‘handles’ and separated. I also spent a long time anxiously trying to put out a variety of incense that wouldn’t stop burning. I was worried that security would catch the smoke.

Dream #2
At the Japan airport gate. My sister is trying to change her seat from Red 9 to the lounge because she missed her connection last time she sat in red 9. She points to confiscated items under the help desk, picking up a lighter, to show her ask is reasonable but it’s denied by old Russian man behind desk. We board the plane.

Dream fragment #3
I’m hiding under some slatted stairs and a friend is teasing me with realistic stuffed animals that he had made.

Dream fragment #4
On top of moving train. In some sort of hammock and trying not to lose my keys or other things out of my pocket through the hammock netting.

Death and Pterry

I'm in some classroom with bluish lighting, either playing a game or actually physically there. I see a couple of small black bunny statues on top of the hanging fluorescent lights and remember I'm supposed to click/collect them to get points. Between some of the bunnies I see a miniature Death from Discworld talking with a mini Pterry - I accidentally make both of them decade or two younger because I use something like a magnifying glass on them. Someone comments that they've never seen that before. I guess Death isn't a skeleton in this case? I get concerned and try to reverse it but it eventually doesn't matter.

There's more to this but I don't remember.

FA Chain LD

(some of this might be out of order because there were quite a few FAs but should be roughly correct.)

I wake up sometime in the night and try to WILD. Eventually I do the nose check and yup I'm dreaming. I get out of bed and open the window and leave. As usual the window is accessible compared to IRL where I have a desk in front of it. The window slides upwards instead of to the side.

Somehow I find myself indoors in some vast shifting building. I try to remember my DV LD competition goals and recall one about hobbies. I find a whiteboard on a wall and take one of the dry erase markers nearby and start drawing. There's already a bunch of writing and some doodles on it shifting around. I see a doodle of an anime face on it and try to do the same. It's difficult because with every stroke the dry erase marker changes color and the drawing "wiggles", turning into something almost but not quite the same. I manage to finish a very unimpressive drawing. I think it's the face of a girl with two small hair buns.

At some point I try to fly but gravity gets in the way as usual and I slowly fall down, though this time I'm decently bouyant.

Next I look around and think about trying climbing. I try to manifest some climbing walls as I scale upwards but all I get are sections of mall-like areas / food courts, dark blue and orangish. I'm pulling myself up the walls that I can reach -- they're made of some soft netlike material and are not quite vertical. Some sections are more like stairs. The indoors is more like an escher painting with nonsensical architecture than a regular building. I don't get anything more done when I wake up.

I'm disappointed that my LD was short as usual. I decide to write down my dream on my phone before I forget in my usual notetaking app, which is correctly in dark mode with purple highlights, but there are weird outlined blocks of text that keep reappearing in my notes even after I delete them and I can't make much progress writing it down. I think this is a bit weird. Shortly after, I try RCing and it's actually an FA. I pull myself out of bed and exit through the window.

I decide to make my way through the city like Spiderman. I make the web shooting sign with my hand and shoot webs to swing around a couple of buildings/skyscrapers and remember possibly talking to a friend about being able to do so in an LD. It's pretty fun though not as vivid as it could be. Eventually I find myself in some city streets.

I call out in the street for A. (one of my characters), and some stocky latino guy with a buzzcut comes around the corner. He asks for my name first and I tell him. He says his name is Emilio [something]. I ask if he knows if A. is around and he says no, unfortunately not (with the implication that he's not in the dream world at all). I say it would be nice to get to chat with him. As we talk, I spiderman up a building and he follows, hauling himself up a metal awning with pure physical strength. I'm about to ask him further, but I wake up.

I do the nose check again, realize it's an FA, roll out of bed. This time I grab the handset of a corded phone on a desk next to the window, or pretend to do so with the phone hand sign up at my ear. I don't call anyone specific, but an older woman responds. I ask for A. as I leave through the window and she says, one moment, can you put yourself on mute? I pretend to do so by "pressing" a button on my fake phone and making a "beep" sound. I have no idea if it works. It occurs to me (absurdly) that if I take a corded phone outside, the cord would get caught on the window and have a distance limit, so I switch to pretending to hold a smartphone instead. I walk around while waiting for the woman, ducking under some scaffolding. It's nighttime. I wake up again before I get an answer.

it's another FA. I try to pause this time before leaving to try and stabilize the dream. I don't think it really helps but I look outside the window and it's a busy city street at night, with a bunch of residential brownstones across the street. There's an ambulance traveling backwards, possibly floating. The air is cool against my skin. I glance to my left and right -- I'm a couple stories up in some red brick apartment building. I half expect some other person to be leaning out their own windows at the same time, but there's no one in the adjoining apartments. I call out for both A. and E. (another character) but don't get any response. A group of people pass by below me and one of them is N. (an IRL friend) with longer hair than usual, his hair half up. I hop down and talk to him and say that I like his new hairstyle. He's about to respond when I wake up for real.

Dream #1:
It’s night and I’m in childhood valley near where I grew up. I’m invisible and sneaking into my “animal senses” in order to wake them up. This was done by entering a bush on the side of the valley road without the cars headlights noticing as they drive past. I would then change into different animals? I’m doing pretty well first in a big cat form, but get a premonition that something big is going to go wrong. A massive train made of beaten up blue retro vans bursts destructively from my best friend's old house and into the valley. It careens up the road, and towards the hill that leads to my childhood home. I know I need to stop it, so I turn into a wolf with “earth powers” to try and cut it off. Scene goes third person, and as the wolf runs it creates a trail of earthquakes/earth walls behind it to block the “train’s” path as it tries to go up the valley hill.

Dream fragment #2:
Cleaning a large empty pool. There are leaves strewn on the bottom. I find metal skewers in pool (one with blue and one with red handles), which seems kind of dangerous. There is some sort of substitute teacher trying to direct operations of our group, but she realizes she’s redundant and that we already know what we’re doing.

Dream fragment #3:
I’m with a couple others learning how to summon “curses” or “spells” of some sort using intention. I think we’re in some sort of Buddhist monastery. I’m walking up some stairs and focused on my intention when I feel a shift inside of me. A couple metal “skewers” begin to fly around me and into the open chamber at the top of the stairs. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is our teacher and I can see him smiling as he follows me up the stairs. He says I’ve started to figure it out.

I am taking some sort of class as myself but I am not taking part in one of the activities where my classmates have to do a bunch of soldering and construction to make a bunch of small devices. There's also something potentially about using magic to screw in some screws but it requires finesse to spin each screw individually at the same time instead of spinning the entire group of screws. I watch them from a vantage point, as the classroom is structured like an auditorium. My classmates work where the stage would be and my viewpoint is from an upper platform.

At first I think I am physically not there but then one of my classmates approaches me and asks me about the project and someone else says I'm there for the sake of recording but I'm not actually taking part.

---

I am an alternate version of myself who went to art school(?). Rather I am talking to someone who knows of that version of me and is asking me about it and the comics I put out and/or analyzed in 2021. I don't remember this but I remember reading similar comics in my own timeline from the same publisher (this does not exist IRL). The art and covers are pretty Western style, not my usual, but good. One of the covers is of two characters walking, all late afternoon orange colors.

This transitions into a section where I am watching the alternate version of myself in third person. My name is still [IRL name] but "I" am very different. I wear a large black cardigan over a mesh black sleeveless vest and dark pants. "I" am talking to someone which eventually leads to the escape.

This turns into perhaps a half-dream where I am actually the alternate version of myself but due to some sort of trauma or depression I escape through a tunnel in the sea and into an alternate world to no longer be an artist. Still, in this other world I make some zines including one about gender where I explain I am a guy.

I am with a group of people. There is some show or event that involves bringing to life famous objects, one of which is a simple purple roadster-type car/van from a manga reminscient of DBZ. This car is gifted to a guy who is a participant on the show. I wonder out loud if they would have made the design more interesting if they knew it would be made into a physical thing in the future. Also we are at the back of a store or school, late at night, and there is an employee waiting for us to finish up so she can let us back out.

---

Traveling down some sort of beach or outside path with a couple other people including someone using a wheelchair and we fall behind with the rest of the group and find ourselves in a sort of dead end with a drop and a steep slope and a long metal wire fence. I look up past the fence to a nearby elevated walkway. There is a guy with a toddler. The toddler attempts to climb through the (very ineffective) guardrails and nearly falls off the walkway, but the guy catches her in time.

We spend way too long trying to figure out how we can get the wheelchair person past this when we eventually discover an accessible door all the way at the end of the ramp. Someone who is in charge of thinking about accessibility for this park comes and asks about it and we try to be helpful and point out that the door was not hardly visible at all.

Dystopia:
I'm with a group of people in a small hotel room, late a night with the lights down. There is a mother and three or so small kids. One of them has an Apple Watch around his head like a headband.
I think to myself that the kid doesn't know how that tech is supposed to work, but then I reason that well, how could he?
I recall that I'm living in a social dystopia. The rest of the group is sleeping, but there is still a movie playing on the TV.
I remember that we get social credit score points for watching whatever is on, even if we only listen to it.
I get up and move to a side room where a computer is. I know the show is propaganda of some sort, even if I am comfortable with it by now (and it doesn't really feel like propaganda any more).
I make sure that I can hear it at least a little, so the points are credited to me, even if I don't buy the meaning of the content a bit.
I wonder if I am really winning, or if the State planned for that, and the sounds reaching my ears are enough for them to influence me.
I push the TV from my mind and focus on the computer.
It's reminiscent of a horizontal head-to-head arcade game cabinet, like Pac-Man or Galaga used to be on.
I'm amazed that I can pull up my "spank-bank" folder from high-school, even in a world as messed up as this one.
I decide I want to see if I can move a picture from that folder to the desktop and see it in the low-tech pixels.
While I'm in the folders, the monitor shifts when my attention is away, and now it is a large monitor up high about the desk.
I manage to move the image, but then I remember I need to hide the shortcut and the file.


Grimdark spooky modern dystopia *waves arms spookily*

Fragment:
I'm at a townhouse-like home. It's raining outside. I recall that I was with a group and we were cooking something. I may have burned my finger by poking a pie fresh out of the oven.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez found himself in a dreamscape of a simulacrum of the San Francisco bay area and somewhere in south america. He was on a street on an incredibly high hill with a remarkable overlook into the woods below. The dreamscape shared a lot in common with his waking world, albeit certain businesses on the main street were open and some were closed of abandoned. In the background were discussions about hip replacement surgery and menstruation as he navigated this dreamscape and tried to look for something in particular. Whenever he wanted to wake up he would find a specific fenced corridor decorated with foliage to travel through. What started out as an empty street soon became full of kids playing and businesses operating. I forget what it was he was looking for. Perhaps it was some sort of personal truth. He drank some dirty water at one point and eventually woke up in a bathtub in one of these abandoned places. An old lady that ran one of the restaurants introduced him to some of the kids he saw in the dream.

I'm unsure how to explain it but this dream evoked a type of liminal feeling introspective/retrospective feeling you can only get in dreams. It's an odd and fascinating feeling. Quite peaceful.

Dream fragment #1:
I’m part of some sort of race and I’m climbing down an invisible pinnacle in a dark cave. I have to use touch in order to climb down and I make it to the bottom of the pit way ahead of competition. The ground is lit up by light and other people are there.

Dream fragment #2:
I’ve home-made ginger cider. I pour it for a couple people, but don’t have enough for everyone. I’m upset that I only have a little left for myself.

Dream fragment #3:
I volunteer to hold my baby nephew, which surprised my sister in law. Instead my partner holds him and takes him briefly out of the room. This is the first time the child has been out of sight of his mother, which alarms her.

Returning:
I'm at a small apartment or house rental with my girlfriend.
Her parents have just arrived. They have flown in.
I hug my girlfriend's Mom and sarcastically tell her long time no see.
I know that we had just been on a trip with them recently.

Fragment:
Something JRPG related, probably because I've been watching Delicious in Dungeon lately.

One dream

I was on a bed with Jamie. We were joking around. I put a towel over my head to jokingly imitate her. She kissed me. It was slow at first, but I was going all in with it. She then matched what I was doing... Then woke up fast.