non-lucid

Original dream dated 02/04/2006:
So I just woke up from a stupid nightmare...

I do this thing where I'm having nightmares and for some reason I can't wake up. I don't know why. I may even know I'm having a nightmare, I just can't seem to make that shift from 'asleep' to 'awake'. Basically, I know full well that I'm having a dream, I just can't do a damn thing about it.

So first, I dreamed that for some reason I was sent parachuting, only for some reason parachutes had the capability to rise off of the ground. Instead of being strapped in with a harness, I just held onto a handle. While I was doing this, I briefly thought "C would think it was funny that I was having a dream about parachuting". Then, when I was fairly high up, I either lost my grip or just plain let go.
So I 'woke up' a little while later, covered by a sheet, with a nasty case of rug burn everywhere, where I had hit the ground/slid... it hurt like a bitch... anyway, there was some kid there who had found me... I dunno.
Then, for some reason, I was making a movie, and working with some really cool actors.

Then, the dream shifted, and I was dreaming about a skinny old witch who had to go stop a bunch of zombies. So she came to this castle... place? There were a king and queen, and they were complaining about how there was an old man who just wouldn't stay dead...
So she went out to talk to the old man zombie, who said he was waiting for his 'date' who had never gotten there. He was eating some soup. The witch ate some soup, which I guess was pretty good, and asked how old it was. He said "oh, it's not that old, only a year or so", to which she gagged a bit but continued eating out of politeness and a desire to humor him. Then she saw that he had a chess set, and asked if he played chess. He replied that yes, he did, but this one chess problem had been confounding him. She went and looked at it and realized that it was (to her) a relatively basic problem. Meanwhile, he sharpened his teeth on the chair. Before she could tell him how to solve it, he attacked her, making this awful screech. She managed to fend him off. She went back to the castle, where the dog was cooking a stew, and they all turned out to be zombies also, although the dog's stew wasn't nearly as good as the old man's. So she kicked all of their asses and then let out a hypersonic screech of triumph. The screech left them all pretty confused, like, "Why was that woman screaming at us?" so they just went back to eating their stew.

Then I dreamed about a cat howling in the dark. I woke up from the dream and wandered around, but the cat appeared to be o.k.

Then I dreamed about clock hands, and about how there was this giant clock with 3 hands, and how the hands had to be arranged just so to indicate a particular point in time - not just in a regular day, I mean, in the past or in the future or whatever. Like, 10:00 p.m. in 3 days looked completely different from 10:00 pm today. So I dreamed that I rearranged the hands of the clock and suddenly I was back to making the movie again and the king from my last dream was there, telling me how to work the clock.

And then, for some reason, I was underwear shopping, and I was getting very upset that they didn't have the color that I wanted.

Original dream dated 01/21/2006:

So I had a dream... something about giraffes... I don't really remember. Or video games. Giraffes in video games? I know it was really weird, but I didn't write it down right away, I just though "Hey, that's a weird dream, even for me". Usually if I forget what a dream was, and I just sort of think about trying to remember it for a while, the memory will come back to me later (usually at an odd/inconvenient time). Something about World of Warcraft, with giraffes, maybe it's that the new race was a giraffe, I don't know.

LATER EDIT:
Ok, I finally remembered my dream, and it had nothing to do with giraffes.

I dreamed that I was playing this video game based off of "Inspector Gadget". It wasn't an MMORPG but it had social elements (somehow?). Anyway, it was a VR game for a full virtual reality system that had just debuted, and in the dream, I was one of the main people who developed it. It was REALLY good game, too, not lame like a lot of games based off of animated series' are. Good graphics and special effects, kickass soundtrack, and the sheer gameplay itself was awesome.

I was basically playtesting the game I helped create in the dream, the particular level I was in involved chasing this one badguy down mineshafts, he kept using explosives on me, it was pissing me off. You didn't play as Gadget, but switched between Penny or Brain. You generally didn't get to choose whom you would be playing as, it depended on what point in the story you were at. In this case, the story was forcing you to play Brain at this point in the game. I think that in this level the Chief was hidden inside of a barrel of explosives (TNT?).
Basically, you (Brain) were following Gadget, who was chasing the bad guy, and your main objective was to keep Gadget from getting killed by all of the explosives, collapsing mineshafts, falling rocks, and machinery. It was a very tough level - one of the toughest.

Basically, how 'levels' were completed was, each level had Objectives. As you fulfilled them, your Objective bar lit up and filled. You had to fulfill all of the Objectives to pass the mission. Once you'd fulfilled all of the Objectives for that stage in the mission, the difficulty level went up, and you got another Objective bar. Your objectives changed depending on what you did and what happened, so you might wind up with different objectives every time you played a level. I dunno, it was a system that made sense in my dream... in any case, I had fulfilled objective bar #1, which had been hard as fuck to begin with, and bar #2 was pretty insanely difficult. You could technically beat the level if you fulfilled only the objectives in the first objective bar, but you wouldn't get the best outcome once you had completed it. If you managed to fulfill all of the objectives in objective bar #3, you got the best possible outcome for the mission/level. So basically, objective bar #1 was Necessary, bar #2 was second priorities, bar #3 was going above and beyond what you technically "needed" to do. i.e. bar #1 would be preventing Gadget from generally being blown to bits, bar #2 would be actually harming the badguy he was chasing, bar #3 would be collapsing the mine shaft on top of the bad guy.

Most of the levels revolved around preventing Gadget from killing himself, or else playing as Penny and sneaking around/hacking into computer systems. So the Brain levels were puzzle levels, and the Penny levels were sneak/recon levels, although they revolved as much around not being seen by Gadget as not being seen by the enemies. And of course, what you did as one character affected your next mission as the other character.

All in all, not a bad dream. I think the giraffes idea came from Gadget having a stretchy neck... who knows?

01/04/2006:
"I had a very odd dream. Odd for me, in that it was a dream and not a nightmare, and had people I know in it.

I dreamed, first, that my roommate and I had gotten our other roommate a gift. The gift was a very small dog dish, with dog biscuits. He was very happy about the dog biscuits because they were from Germany. I sampled a dog biscuit and agreed that they were very good.

He was masterminding this television program where people wrestled each other live in their livingrooms, him and y were taping it, what ensued was a rampage through our livingroom where we all tried to best each other using a combination of sleeper holds, water, and dog biscuits... then everybody (K, C, me, P, M, Ky, and a whole slew of other people) decided to drive to campus, because it was the first day of classes. On the way there was this radio show where they only played the main riffs from all of the hit songs. We got stuck in traffic but nobody minded. When we got there, we continued taping the show, and small groups of people chose slightly different routes to the main part of campus. Somebody had brought a radio with and had it tuned to the same station we were listening to in the car. For some reason, everybody had been rained on, even though it had never rained, and we were wringing out each others' hair and clothes. We merged into one large group and started picking up other people along the way, acquaintances of people in the group. I think when the dream ended, we were heading toward S Hall dorms."

Morning of December 14, 2005. Wednesday.

Dream #: 14,240-02. Reading time (optimized): 1 min 30 sec.



My dream’s setting is an imaginary variation of our Duffy Street apartment in Millbank. My waking-life identity is mostly intact.

After I open a fictitious door in our kitchen (a door that would, if it existed, lead to our bedroom), I fall into the repetitive activity of opening one door after another. In some instances, I walk through a tiny room with another door on the opposite side. Often, each doorway is so close to the previous there is no additional room, only another door.

Eventually, I find myself back in our kitchen. There is a coffin standing on its bottom end near where our bathroom entrance would be in waking life. However, it has the essence of a door into another room, and I feel I should open it.

I open the “door” (coffin lid), but instead of another room, it is a display of stars and nebulae as if I am looking into outer space. There is a feeling of bliss while I am waking.

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Decoding:

There are two reasons why I would open a door in a dream; one, to exit the dream state and wake myself; two, to vivify or reinduce the dream state.

The first door, had it existed in waking life, would have led to our bedroom. The coffin “door,” had it existed, would have led to our bathroom. These factors show I was instinctually contemplating whether to remain asleep or wake to use the bathroom.

Both the coffin and the view of outer space in this instance are a result of the same degree of sleep atonia, which was also why it took longer to wake myself by repeatedly opening doors.

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Influence:

“The Manitou” from 1978 is a subliminal influence. The door to Karen’s hospital room led into outer space, where her bed was floating. Her battle with Misquamacus included her directing a beam of light at him.

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Influence’s decoding: Although my dream’s final “door” (correlation with our bathroom in waking life) led to outer space, I was still asleep in bed.

Subliminal influence (not rendered): In the movie, Karen emanated and directed lightning from around her body (while in her bed in outer space). Lightning in a dream typically represents the instinctual anticipation of the cortical energy required for achieving consciousness.

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Morning of August 12, 2005. Friday.



They are remaking the Disney movie “The Shaggy D.A.” and I am to hold the starring role. It seems like a genuine moneymaking endeavor at first.

Instead, it becomes a session in experiencing loss. In my role as a dog in the studio and various takes, I seemingly become more isolated and out of touch with who I was meant to be (relative to my waking life, though I am not lucid). My wife is present but I still feel I am not where I should be since I must be “perfect” in my role for the movie and not be myself at all. She stands with her hands together and is not part of the filming scenario. Pretending to be a dog (and sometimes actually seeming to be a dog) in my role is amusing at first and I even pretend to be a disobedient dog and wreck some of the sets and require a larger number of takes to get a scene right. I also get annoyed with having to hold a large piece of white wool carpeting over my head at times, which cuts down on my ability to maneuver and sometimes blocks my vision.

The producers become frustrated with me yet I am not fired. When I discover someone else plays me as a human, I become myself again and punch them in the face numerous times. I do not think the movie will be completed…

June 27, 2004:
I had this dream that I had Bunbun and a cat in cages, and they kept getting out, and I was afraid that the cat was going to eat Bunbun so I put her back in her cage, but every time I turned around she was back out of it.

In the end, I had to keep the cat in the cage and give up on keeping Bunbun in her own cage.

June 18, 2004:
Last night I had a dream that the cast of 8 Bit Theater was driving a jet plane down highway 41. I know there was a plot and stuff but I don't remember it, only that they eventually got the plane stuck in a hotel lobby.

June 30, 2004:
I had this dream I was fighting the forces of evil in a video game. Or else it was a theme park. But you accessed each room by going through a maze in virtual reality and entering little trap doors. In the end, I had to go to this one area, which had a pretty cool design scheme, and go to the "Jail", which was also technically a portal to Hell. Everything was on fire and the main boss I had to fight was impervious to normal weapons. I realized that in order to kill him, I was going to have to bring a mage with me or else get magical weapons (I was thinking of getting a gun with enchanted bullets). But I realized that enchanted weapons probably wouldn't be enough, nor would one person. So I raised an army and we went and stormed the building and brought that mofo down.

21.06.2004

(Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

1st half of the 20th century.
I am engaged to a young man with a mustache who looks like a soldier or a gendarme.
Every night, a man breaks into my bedroom and try, with a lancet, to slice open my abdomen to steal a piece of my bowels while I am asleep. The first time, I manage to alert everyone. The second time, my fiancé was keeping watch in my bedroom, but the slicer managed to escape anyway.
In a daring plan to catch the slicer, on the third night, my fiancé decides to put on my night gown and sleep in my bed to fool the slicer into thinking he's me.

May 27, 2004:
I had a dream that I had to go back to middle-school, and my class schedule was sort of the same, only they had changed certain classes. I had to take art class again. So anyway, my friend A___ sent some MP3s of music that he had composed, and W___ was waiting tables somewhere in Australia... and then I got in trouble in class because I was supposed to have this book of stuff I had written and some files and stuff, but I had forgotten it at home, so I asked the teacher if she would let me call my mother. I had to talk to the teacher through an intercom because she was actually inside one of those crane machines where you put in a quarter and try to get a stuffed animal.

Anyway, the teacher said yes, and was even nice enough to say that she'd give me full credit. So I went to call my mom.

Instead, we wound up going to R. Museum, where I enrolled in art classes. We walked through the gallery and there were some really weird ceramics there (like half a pot that would hang on the wall and stuff). Then all of the sudden I was in this simulator thing, even though I was still in the gallery it turned into a simulation of a gallery. And I wasn't myself, I was actually playing as Torg from Sluggy Freelance. This statue of this one alien thing kept coming to life and zapping me... it was actually Riff with dreadlocks and a face like one of those aliens from Aliens... and it had magical powers... and then this gigantic life-sized blue whale that had been in a case in the gallery came to life and grew legs and started chasing me. It shot lasers out of its eyes. Then this other golem-thing came to life and tried to kill me. I fought them all by beating them flat with a pillar of stone that I grabbed from the gallery. But they kept killing me, which was not very nice.

Then I dreamed that we were driving through south florida... to go to college... and it was a really dry autumn, and I was glad that there were no wild fires... but then all of the people in the back seat got all Rocky Horror Picture Show in a large cardboard box that they had back there, which was just creepy.

April 19, 2004:
I had this weird dream about some sort of evil... thing. It was really evil, and nasty, that's all I really remember. Only these people fought it, but only one chick survived, and they trapped it in a duffel bag. Yes, a duffel bag. Only it wasn't so much a duffel bag as it was an actual location... like... there was a whole world inside of the duffel bag.

I remember the evil infected people, like a plague or something. And there were lumpy evil rat things. So I was mulling over this idea that it was actually maybe some sort of physical disease that just MADE things evil, and the one chick seemed really tired like she didn't want to think about it. But I pointed out that there were tiny holes appearing in her duffel bag. So she admitted that they had only trapped it, not actually dealt with it, and that it could still get out again. But it already HAD gotten out again, I just hadn't had to deal with it directly yet... so she left the duffel with me, cuz she had to do something, but she was gonna come back, and she made me agree that I'd stay there to guard the duffel and I had to make a pact with her that we were in this all the way, because things were going to get ugly.
I don't know how it turned out because I woke up.

Jan. 31, 2004:

I had this dream that George Bush got turned into a kitten, and that while he was trying to give the State of the Union address, all of these cartoon characters kept trying to kidnap him. A 2 lb. George Bush swore in a squeaky voice while getting chased by a chihuahua, and seeing a tabby kitten go ballistic was well worth my time spent asleep.

Then I had some weird dream about how all of the cartoons were getting uber-stylized, a la Samurai Jack, with nothing but straight lines and squares and angles.

Feb. 9, 2004:
I miss Abby a lot. I dozed off in my chair a little bit while M__ and T__ crashed here this morning and I dreamt she was in my dorm room.

March 1, 2004:
I had one of the freakiest dreams in a while. I dreamed there was this big war, and I fought in it, and I did something really important but I got injured. And something about me being topless because of the injury. And I dreamed that I sort of turned into a skeleton quasi-death thing, but only if you looked at me the right way. So my uncle drove me to this place... only he wasn't my actual uncle and had long hair, and he sang really well... he stood outside singing until a woman inside noticed, so she treated my injuries and baptised him.

Morning of December 18, 2003. Thursday.



In my dream, I need to get to the other side of town (related to a forgotten back story), that being the north side of La Crosse (though I am living in Australia at the time in my dream as well, thus I quickly got from my home in Australia to La Crosse somehow - without giving it any logical thought). It is getting a bit cooler (which it would be in La Crosse, though there is not much snow and I do not feel freezing cold). I find myself going fairly fast and I realize that I am going down the middle of the street on a wheeled office chair. I get to an intersection and do not see any cars from any direction (at least closer), and I continue to move forward with a vague concern about oncoming traffic. This area was an incline (as I am headed downwards to the east) so did not quite need as much footwork and do not need any “brakes”, which is somewhat of both a concern and a relief at different times, as I am not sure if I can stop the chair in every instance. I feel a bit strange “driving” a wheeled office chair (which is the same one I sat on in real life at my computer desk on Stadcor Street) through a busier area of town and wonder if I should be riding a bicycle instead. Somehow, riding a bicycle seems just a bit stranger (in my dream only) than riding my wheeled office chair, which I think is partly because a bicycle can just fall over (kickstands not always working correctly) and would have to be leaned against something after getting off (which seems far more of a concern in my dream than it would be in reality). I lose speed here and there at times, which is a bit annoying, but the environment is quite vivid and correctly detailed. I feel fairly good otherwise. My dream has a very well-rendered sense of open space and movement. There is a bit of traffic, but not that much.

Morning of September 13, 2003. Saturday.



It is Zsuzsanna’s birthday and I am buying her red roses and white lilies with rolls of American quarters. (This is illogical as it should be Australian coins.)

While at the checkout (where at least one unfamiliar female cashier is present), I am somewhat absentminded and I am not certain which coins on the counter have already been given to the cashier (personified preconscious) and which are still mine to use.

I check to see if I have dropped any quarters and I notice I am barefoot. I think about mentally willing my shoes to appear, which works for a short time. (I am only subliminally lucid, otherwise unaware I am dreaming, yet taking my will to manifest for granted. This is more likely to occur at a certain level of liminal space as there are a number of different levels of unconsciousness and dream state perception.)

---

Being barefoot in a dream is usually just a subliminal carryover memory of having fallen asleep (as I do not wear shoes or socks to bed). Just because a person is unconscious or semiconscious does not mean they always lose all perception of the status of their physical body or totally forget that they have fallen asleep. To “interpret” being barefoot, or any other type of dream state indicator, despite the setting, is to ridiculously overthink it and lose focus of what a dream actually is (a thought process in real time while one does not have viable faculties).

Being at the checkout is a very familiar form of waking symbolism. A checkout typically symbolizes the end marker of the dream state (or at least a shift in the level of unconsciousness or extent of reticular activating system activity).

I have noticed that coins are more likely to appear in a more vivid state of awareness than notes. This has something to do with the nature of coalescence and neural energy (in real time). A gathering or cascade of coins would symbolize emergent consciousness.

The rest, Zsuzsanna’s birthday and the flowers, are of course literal associations. Love is present regardless of the depth of unconsciousness and occasional loss of personal identity or conscious self validity.

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Sept. 5, 2003:
I dreamed that there was this blonde disabled woman, who somehow despite her disabilities and her family (her mom and sister were both real bitches) had overcome all of these hurdles, risen to the top of her class... her one dream was to go to Belgium, and she got the chance, but then her sister screwed it up for her...

Then for some reason, both of her family members were witches and made people hallucinate and act crazy. And they killed a lot of people. The end.

Sept. 2, 2003:
I had this dream that my uncle had a fish-tank, only instead of fish there were hamsters swimming around in it. When I asked, "Aren't you worried they're gonna drown?" and he was like "No, they've lived in water all their life, they fell in there when they were babies". Then I dreamed I was in an office doing secretary work. There was some other stuff, but I've forgotten it already.

Sept. 4, 2003:
I had a dream, but I don't remember very much. My alarm clock went off and I hit the snooze button. Then I had a very realistic dream that mom called me on my cell phone, and the reception was really really bad, but I woke up halfway through the dream (so I know it was a dream).

I've had weird dreams, and I haven't been sleeping well... I don't know why I feel so ill but I just can't sleep. I reached that state of overtiredness that isn't caused by a lack of sleep, so much as too much stress. I mean that state where you're actually almost hallucinating, and you're paranoid because you're jumping at stuff that you see out of the corner of your eye, but isn't actually there. And all of the freaky dreams don't help either.

I mean, aside from the hamster-fishtank dream, I had a dream I was talking with Mom on the cell phone, but I had a nightmare too. I had a dream that I woke up and somebody was standing in my bedroom, but then I dreamed that I fell asleep again, or something. I know there wasn't anybody in my room, for several reasons. The first: my door was locked. I always lock and close my door when I go to sleep. Second, none of my roommates are like 6'3 or 6'4" tall and male. Third, it had that nice, surreal quality that makes you think "Hmm, I'm dreaming."

This one's a common one. I've been having these for basically forever. For context, I graduated nearly a decade ago...

Aug. 19, 2003:
...so I keep having this recurring nightmare, possibly one of the most ridiculous nightmares ever. But the point is, I keep having it. It actually makes sense... um, sort of, sometimes... which is more than most of my OTHER nightmares do.

Basically, it's like this: it's the first or second week of classes. I have my class schedule, I know when and where all of my classes are. But for some reason I keep forgetting or falling asleep and missing all of my classes. And no matter how hard I try to go to class, something always happens and I can't.
I admit, last night's version was slightly weirder than usual. For example, one of my classes entailed - get this - shopping in a department store. There was this JC Penny's on campus, which was where class was at. And there were all of these people out on the lawn dressed up as mascots, who were actually psychology students studying peoples' love/hatred/fear of college mascots. And my college algebra professor in the dream was a huge dick. No, not literally, although anything is possible in my dreams... he was just a big jerk. I finished my homework and tried to hand it in, but he refused it, even though he'd accepted homework from the 2 people in front of me, on the grounds that he'd already given out the answers, which he did while I was trying to hand in the damn assignment. Then there were these 3 professors who were, like, triplets or something, and they all looked exactly identical. Except one taught math, one taught science, and one taught something else... they had rooms right next to each other and were fighting over some sort of computerized marquis thingy. Then I had to put all of these clothes away in this one closet in a classroom.

I was pissed that my algebra prof was being such a jackass, so I went to ask my uncle S if he could help me with my algebra, only instead of living in their regular house, my uncle and cousins lived in this weird mansion that was like a fun-house. And I wandered into this room with all of these gears and stuff in it, I was trying to figure out how to get to another room when my uncle's friend came in and told me to stop hopping on the gears... it turned out they were parts of this gigantic indoor ferris wheel. And then I was eating at a McDonald's with a bunch of my friends, and it was raining outside... but somehow all of this was still inside the mansion. And something or someone was chasing us, because we'd stolen something.