non-lucid

10:30 PM
I was watching television, sitting on a ledge of a cliff of beds (the ledge was a single mattress that butted out of the main column). On the television was a series showing pornstars using their fame to raise awareness for animals. Each image displayed on the screen. Each image consisted of a hurt animal and a woman looking up, with a lot of cleavage, at the camera, in a manner such as "Shame on you." Some of the animals displayed were parrots or dogs. The pornstars would pet the animals in "sexual" ways (not to the animals themselves). At one point I believe there was talk of dead animals and necrophilia.

As a side note, I do not condone this nor do I find pleasure in any of that .

Later on I was looking up cars and writing SQL queries for a business (perhaps Disney). There was talk of giant corporations not needing coverage of 100% of their items.

I also had a view of an angel trying to fly, or giving the illusion of flight. The view consisted of images shoddily ran through like in a flipbook. I was told by someone that by moving the angel in each image, it looks as if its flying.

3:30 AM
I again attempted a WILD and had the following dream:

I was walking behind a girl, naked (her as well), down a street behind another naked girl. I would accidentally brush up against her butt periodically, which resulted in me getting an erection. Suddenly she was on the other side of the street, taking a shower, and I turned away to hide myself. As I turned my eyes fell upon a field in which a lot of different people were playing around. A midget and a taller woman seemed to be in a relationship laughing around, and lots of kids were playing. At this point I was clothed and forgot about the two girls. Amongst this crowd were two pygmies playing with rockets. They would shoot fire at the ends and propel the rockets at people intentionally trying to hurt them.

They were doing a poor job and the woman with the midget pulled out her own rocket launcher, shooting at a building and blowing off parts of it. The pygmies, not wanting to be shown up, decided to shoot three napalm filled rockets in quick succession. Two went off into the distance but one fell short and landed near me. I was able to avoid it, but I saw my sister was also close by. I yelled at her to get away but the napalm caught onto her skin- she turned into a piece of paper that then floated by me and burnt away.

I became enraged and grabbed the pygmies by the scruff of their necks, one in each hand. I found a pond and shoved their faces in, drowning both, though I intended to only get them near drowning so I could repeat the process ad infinitum. I then grabbed a shovel and beat one of them into dust with it. Later on I was with someone, and I lamented to them about the fact that my sister not only died, but suffered greatly during the process. I turned to a tunnel and began crying, and the person with me came in and consoled me. He later described some of his own losses.

I later ended up in a classroom in front of a former teacher. I was still thinking about my sister, and would have to try and stop myself from crying. The teacher then drew an odd toilet on the blackboard. It had a faucet out of the top, where the closet would usually be, and instead of a bowl, it had two drains level to one another. I believe one was for solid waste and the other for liquid. I also think the faucet was meant to serve as a bidet.

The goal was to come up with a marketing strategy to discuss why someone would want to buy this toilet. I started trying to come up with reasons (I don't remember what it was), but the girl behind me decided to start dancing, followed by another dude sitting where she was and poking my head. I told him to quit, as I needed to make progress on this paper.

I return home and come across my mother and my sister, unhurt. I was amazed by this, but it turned out I had an identical half-sister named Nash (I have no idea where this name came from) who died, not her. My mother began talking about a boy and his grandmother, and a similar event that happened with them (one dying presumably). During this talk I poured myself a bowl of curly fries with milk. My mother thought this was gross, but after trying a curly fry, agreed it was good.

Lastly, and disjoint with the rest of the dream, I remember Madison Ivy and Geoff Ramsey with some other girl, creating a porno in a very cheesy way. He was complaining that he needed a bigger butt to rub his moustache in, which was the cue for the other girl to walk to. My view jumped from these two to an elevator I was in, with my dad. It was manually powered, and to operate it required moving a lever vertically (up to go up, down to go down). It was very fast though, and we had to be careful not to hit either the ground or ceiling. Later on I led him on my hands and knees through a scavenger hunt or something.

Date: 06 June

Didn't plan to wbtb but woke up super alert and couldn't fall asleep for quite a while. Had to rush so left only key words and wrote the entry much later. Apart from that I can say that this was probably one of the longest lds I've had.

Ld: I appear on the street in a car, some guy nearby. For some reason I decide to think of my physical body and panic as not to wake myself [have been reading about this on the forum and got some sort of schema infection]. I try to ignore it and concentrate on the dream, get out of the car. On the street, I run into a chick with a black dress, try to kiss her for totm but wake up.

I wait for another dream.

LD: In an apartment with my mom (this dream lasts super long, I don't try to memorize the details though). Mostly spend it in the apartment, walking around and talking to mom, trying not to control or influence her. Very stable. Mom is talking like a normal person. I kiss her on the cheek for totm.

I examine the living room, the objects - wooden Mayan statues like the face of Pacal. Kids collectible toys on nearby shelves - I start to recognize them, false memories, they are mine. This place, I have been here before. I face mom and start questioning her about all this. She explains something about this being in the future and our new place.

What's interesting is that I feel super alert. I scan my awareness and I feel this wakefulness - very alert and just as if in real life. I think it's impossible to be dreaming this alert and yet I'm here. There's an Asian DC in place of mom now and a second DC next to her. I intensely question the first about the dream and place but she only smiles shyly. A moment later something happens super fast - there is some sort of an open box and the Asian woman disappears into it - like genie into a lamp sort of but vanishes to leave the empty open box. The other DC turns into some weird objects - it's hard to tell what they are, they turn to little plastic soldiers then transform into other plastic colorful objects.

I remember the meteor task and go to the window, stare at the sky to see a meteor form out of the nothingness. It then moves from the distance following a twisted trajectory, decelerates to fall in front of the window and into a shallow water that covers the street where it disintegrates. I'm a bit disappointed that there is no showy splash or damage, so repeat the process with two smaller meteorites that fall and dissolve in the same way.

The dream continues and I turn back to the apartment where I hang out more. I begin to feel possible lack of ability to stay here, so I go into the kitchen to drink a glass of refreshing cold water. This helps me feel better and focus. A moment later I decide to fully immense in living in this other place and have breakfast. My mom serves me some eggs, they weren't as delicious as I had hoped for but ok.

At some point my bf arrives, where we discuss the place and future but I lose lucidity.

The next part I recall is that we are strolling on the beach and I'm lucid again, reshaping the beach and calming down the waves.

My recall is completely fragmented at the end but after some more on and off lucidity I end up in a church watching DC wearing weird clothes.

(This may be a more boring entry, but maybe it gives some newbies an idea of some of the things you can run into)

6/12/14* wake up after about 5.5 hours of sleep needing to go to the bathroom and afterwards I do my SSILD cycles and I start to get HI's but fall asleep. Later I am having a dream where I am on the field after one of my games and the game after ours looks like a forfeit, perhaps not enough players. It seems like I'm very tired and I believe what happened is that I lay down on the field and went into an in-dream WILDing-like session where I immediately start getting strong HI's and vibrations which I start to play with including a woman on the field whose clothes I pull off with telekinesis and some motion based dream entry. I find myself in my bed (possible false awakening) but I can feel that I'm still fully in the dream world. I decide I should take off all my clothes and get into some mischievous activity. It feels like I am struggling with taking off my clothes and I start to worry a little bit about using my real waking life hands and possibly waking up or exposing myself
while sleeping. But I do get it together and take off my clothes and I'm hanging around the bed when I hear my wife coming up the stairs again and it reminds me of the false awakening last time and I remind myself "okay FA FA FA" (in other words don't get fooled by the false awakening-like scenario). My wife comes into the room and she's holding my laptop and it's on my email account and I get sidetracked from my lucidity for a moment concerned of what she might have read...perhaps some of my updates from dreamviews related to some of the crazy dream adventures I have which she may not like...But then I hear a song playing very clearly (later when I actually woke up I could hear music coming from my son's room but it wasn't where I could hear lyrics or anything whereas in the dream I was definitely hearing lyrics and a song that I seemed to recognize, all much more clearly than what I heard when I woke up). Anyway, I closed my laptop and looked out my window for the source of the sound and I could see some of my teammates outside getting ready for a game and my first thought was why am I not there, why are they playing without me but then I realize the scenario is highly unlikely, especially a game right outside my house...oh yeah this is still a dream this was a false awakening like scenario. I specifically remember "J" & "K" being out there and a little scene played where someone was asking J if he had ever been an ex-WAIF (unsure what this means) and a scene of J sitting at his current job with a desk full of papers. I think that I'm forgetting some details throughout this lengthy dream because I specifically remember thinking that this lucid dream is going fairly long. I find myself back in bed and I wonder if this is another false awakening but then I can feel my wife being amorous and I start to wake up for real. My lucidity level was obviously low throughout or I wouldn't have had such a hard time retaining it or remembering so much of it. Because of this I put the dream through Sageous' FLD test of proving lucidity to yourself and came up with the verdict that I was definitely lucid in spots. I tried to go back to sleep and got some HI's or dreamlets of Cameron Diaz leaning over showing off her cleavage (saw her in a movie last night). 160

This isn't a single dream.

When I was nine, I started dreaming of the same boy in every dream. He aged with me. We grew up together. I loved him, but not as a romantic love. I knew him by the way he felt only. Sometimes he would bring me somebody new to meet or talk to for a while. Sometimes he stayed away for long periods of time. I speculated for years on who he might be and what it meant that he aged with me so perfectly. From the time I could talk I would tell everybody that I had a younger brother, but, of course, nobody wanted to hear it. My friends thought I was nuts and my parents just got tired of my "game."

I don't remember exactly when, but he finally told me that he was my twin brother. He had died before I was born. It's called "vanishing twin syndrome" and even my mother was unaware that there had been a twin, or so she said. About a month ago, I finally told my mother about the dreams and his name: Michael. I remember messing it up earlier and saying Miphael. She told me then that when I was born, less than 3lbs, two weeks late (to the day), and barely alive (placenta had partially detached), the doctors and nurses were looking for the twin. The twin never came. He never would. Not to our parents.

He hasn't been around in my dreams for months now. It has been the longest stretch for years and it hurts. It aches. I will move on, but I think all he wanted was validation that, yes, he did exist, and yes, I did have a twin. I have wanted to seek him out deliberately, but... part of me recognizes that it is not right to always expect others to be there for us when we cannot be there for them. If he has found new life, he needs to live it. If he is resting, let him rest in peace. I am grateful for the time I have had in my dreams with my twin.

I've been having pretty disturbing dreams about my ex these last few nights. See, we were in a healthy relationship for three years and a half, but we started going out when we were almost 15 and we simply grew apart. I broke up with him over two years ago and we haven't kept in touch since, even though it was a clean break-up. Now I have been happily in a relationship with another guy for a while. Thing is, I bumped into my ex last Friday and we had a two-minute interaction, the typical "how's it going". The next day, sacred coincidence, I bumped into him again at a concert, but we didn't talk much either. Both times it felt quite awkward because we never meet anymore and we hadn't even seen each other in almost a year. Then the series of dreams started.

They started two days ago. I dreamt he sent me a Fb friend invitation (he removed his Fb profile some months ago and made a new one just recently, so we're not friends) and left me a message asking why I avoided any chance of talking to him. Yesterday, I dreamt he tried to cut off my legs with a chainsaw. And today I had a dream which involved him and his mother in a pretty nasty way (sexually, somehow), but I can't quite recall the action, I just remember I woke up feeling quite disgusted. Seriously, unconscious mind, what the hell are you trying to tell me?

Of course, all of them were non-lucids. Had I been lucid, I'd have tried to find a way to figure out what was going on.

Last night's dream was not entirely lucid, but once I got there it was fantastic. It has been a long time since I recalled a dream in a journal, so there needs to be some practice there, and I was woken up by external things so that bothered me a bit. So things I need to work on are: lucid dreaming, dream recall, dream re-entering (yes, I can do that), and, of course, writing skills.

First, There was the warehouse that I used as a shortcut, like I owned the place. I can't remember what I was running from the first time, but as I entered the building I was given two choices. The men of the warehouse would let me pass if I modeled for them, or they would kick me out and hand me over to whomever I was running from. Actually, as I write this out, I was hiding from my husband. Hrm, that's strange. Yes, I'm married (almost 12 years), but hiding from him is one thing, modelling for strangers is another, and put them together it's just weird. This is the part where I became lucid though and managed to change a few things around. Modelling was fun and it felt good to be appreciated. In the "real world" I am overweight and not happy about it (hence, the closeup of my fact in the profile picture). In my dream, I was hot stuff.

The dream shifted when my sister came to get me for exams. Did I want to sit my college exams or skip them? I chose to sit them. Again, a difference in dream and awake worlds. I don't sit college exams in my current school; it is all online and exams aren't necessary. I got to choose the location as well, and chose Seton Hall. No, I have never been to Seton Hall, but the process of signing in and sitting an exam was exhilarating. I knew the instructor from previous dreams.

That's something worth mentioning. I dream of the same people a lot. That's another entry, I suppose.

At the end of the exam, we were all treated to a performance from the orchestra, led by a student composer about five years my junior. He had dark hair, an electric smile, and bright eyes. They instructor kept bringing up me during the after-party (type thing) and mentioning to the composer that I was lesbian. In a way, that's true, but after a few minutes he leaned over and whispered that he saw my wedding band "glistening in the light". "That's because I'm married, to a man." I replied. His eyebrows raised and I said the obvious "I'm bi." I felt truly uncomfortable at that point and walked away, back to the warehouse.

Because the warehouse had been previously dirty and "manly" I created an elaborate dressing room for myself to hide in so I could change into something less formal and leave. I had just finished packing up my belongings and clothing when somebody opened the door and scared me half out of my wits. But then, I saw behind him, at a distance, the composer, and I wondered what he could possibly want coming towards me. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to find out, for I was woken up from first my alarm, then my husband's, then our cats. Half the dream is missing in my head because of those continued distractions.

The half that remains lingers, like they always do, like these people are real and tangible.

I have, in fact, met people I have dreamt about, and been places I couldn't have possibly seen prior to. Like when I traveled to Australia, I knew my way around a shopping center having never been there before. I knew what kind of temporary table was set up around the corner. What are the chances? I knew it all like I'd been there a thousand times, yet I hadn't been there even once. And that table, was temporary, just set up, even my friend didn't know it was there.

The same thing happened in Toronto. I knew my way around because I'd been there in my dreams. I knew my friend by the way he walked and the way he "felt."

I'll stop here and make another entry soon.

Date:12th of june.
Total sleep:10 hours.
Supplements: B6 and melatonin.
Daytime Techniques:RC's, mantras, sensory awareness training.
Lucid Techniques:was not lucid.
Recall Techniques: Mantras, dream journal.
Fell Asleep:12.00
Dream Title: sex scandal at the supermarket.
Dream: I only remember bits of the dream, some of it being: Having sex with someone named Suzie? (wtf) Outside of a supermarket. And finging she posted pictures of my penis on the internet to get back at me, for what, i cant remember. Also being by a trailer at the highway, before eventually swimming out to raft in the ocean with my little sister. After we arrive at small raft, we spot a bigger one, and swim out (my little sister clinging to me). When we reach the raft i see a familiar face, Hannah. My memory stops there.
Awake:08.00
Vividness:9
Awareness:2
Length:8
Recall: 2
Emotions/feelings: happines, shame, aroused.
Dream Signs: common DC's (Trym, familiy)
Objects/places/DC's: Supermarket, highway, ocean, trailer, raft, people, alcohol, Trym, George Clooney, Suzie, Hannah, Mia, Video.

Dream fragments: Have a faint memory of a ''beauty and the best'' kinda scene.

Non-lucid, lucid, SP-awake and/or observations

Nap after Work:

.../I'm in the middle of this dream world routine, before going to school. I've just get out of the house and I'm about to go to the bus stop when I realize it's not my waking life and I have dream this sequence before, including the lucidity part. I decide to go on with the plot, so I keep on walking to the bus stop. It's a little bit far from my point of view but I don't mind walking in order to stabilize the dream. I see the bus is already there. I think perhaps I could summon a particular DC in the bus to have some sex. But my body slowly starts to fading out when I realize I stopped feeling my legs.
I'm lying on the bed with my eyes closed. I can partially feel every movement I think about my body although I cannot see it. It's not too difficult to imagine things in this stage. I know I could get back into the dream, so I go on remembering part of the routine I was dreaming before/...
.../I'm getting out of the apartment which is on a higher floor. I realize I can see again and better feel my body. I don't remember other thing but to stabilize the dream. I don't want to lose it thinking too much. I start going down stairs. My body is a little bit blurry and I can still feel myself lying on the bed. so I start slapping my legs and arms to feel them in stead of my real body. It apparently works, so I start going down stairs exaggerating my movements to feel this body. I got to go a couple of floors down but it's too loud out there and I can feel other things which don't make sense in the dreamscape and my body fades out again. I can still feel what I think, but this time it's too loud out here. My wife is making too much noise and I cannot go back to sleep.

* I barely remember I have been shortly lucid in this world before, but it's too blurry to have a proper recall.

00:00 Thursday 2014-06-12

00:25 pre-bedtime
00:38 bedtime

no recording during the night, but some recall during the night.

09:30

+ I'm doing the initiation for some gang, there is a captive who must be killed, I don't want to kill anybody, this gang serves you green food in your room but only if you check in. I put sharpened colored pencils onto a cart and roll it at the captive wounding him slightly, my "guide' is impatient for me to kill him and sets up a timed system where the captive will suffocate at the end of the time, this will be a horrible death so I should be "kind" by killing him sooner. The mechanism is a tube on a wall it looks like medical equipment, the "guide" places a bunch of blue foam earplugs into the tubes as the "timer", when they proceed far enough in the tubes the air will stop.

+ in a room, a girl jumps on my tablet and breaks it, I say "oh great you've broken it", she then helps me find the password so I can log on to it. I pick up the tablet after she jumps on it and see the very big crack running horizontally across the tablet, but I can turn it on and it apparently still operates. The password is something numeric. The girl goes off to find it.

+ ask a lower-class guy in a crowded room to help me with my horse, I think I'm of the noble class, I offer him payment and he comes with me.

+ walking up a winding path road lined with candies, I take 3 different types of mint chocolate, one of them is a huge bar, I'm trying to conceal it

+ quickly jumping down a school-like staircase, the staircase is very wide but each step is very shallow, someone is painting them, I have to be careful to set my foot properly on each step so I don't trip/fall.

+ skiing lesson, there's something wrong with my skis, a strap has become limp it's supposed to be stiff, I'm fiddling with it. The teacher was teaching how to jump parallel turn in the snow. I eventually figure out that I can tighten the strap again and it seems to be working.

+ bowling, I'm at a lane near the right-hand edge of the bowling alley, I bowl a spare. My ball doesn't fit my hand it's too small it's uncomfortable on my fingers, I move to the ball racks lining the wall running along the alley horizontally (like typical bowling alley), at first I'm looking for a pink ball that fits me I try several but they're either too big or too small, then I see yellow balls, white balls, I try anything but can't find one that fits. I see strange balls some are huge and misshapen, up to 4x, 6x larger than normal balls, some have dozens of oddly shaped finger holes in them. Some places along the ball rack are toiletry stores where you can buy things to wash your hands with. I think I should head back to my lane, there must be a ball there I can use, even if they don't want to share it with me.

Some guy back at my lane has gotten 60 strikes in a row, that should at least be good enough at least for 2nd place someone says.

+ eating a big cookie?

6/10/2014

In bed: 1:20 AM - 7:42 AM

#13. I. 7:30 AM
My roommate and I are about to have to go to some sort of event or class. We decide to be fools going there, running across campus there doing crazy things. I head out first, and so am not sure where he is. I start heading there assuming he is on the way. Eventually, I hear him singing on the other side of the buildings to my right on another path, as he is walking towards the same building farther ahead of us. Eventually, he sees me running and runs too. There are a bunch of people out in front of the building we are going into. I see FN, a high school friend, who asks me how my club is, not necessarily realizing that she is asking about the club which she left earlier in the year which makes this awkward. Upstairs, we enter some classroom with a bunch of others where we take part in some activity in different groups.

6/9/2014

In bed: 1:56 AM - 8:38 AM

#11. I. 5:40 AM
Fragment: Adventure game. Pokemon related. I am following a road. Yellow-ish game of different order of guns. No legendary birds though I see Zapdos flying away above me. Passing board area with precursor orbs.
I am in a cooking shop watching two guys cooking. They are really good. They are making biscuits and pancakes for me and possibly others. I taste it when they are done. It is good, but I am not used to pancakes without sausage. They are using faux vegetarian sausage instead.

#12. II. 7:15 AM
I am on a small mountain-like island with a high elevation in the middle and it decreasing around it though there is a mostly flat circle of a path around the middle small peak part before the rest of the elevation drop down to water below. There is a bridge or connection of some sort on one side. I am in a car with a bunch of others. We just got here to pick up someone that was waiting here for us. They are on the phone though and as we wait for them to get off, we drive the car around the short circular path around the short peak. This car is unique as we are driving it using our minds, willing it to move forward and turn. On one part before the area where the person is talking on the phone, there is some rubble and slight obstacles and a short fence with a narrow opening on the side closest to the little peak. It is difficult to navigate the car through the small opening with our minds.

June 11

---

Fragment: Killing Three Birds

I was in my neighbor's back yard, except it was thickly wooded, with two guys. I think I had a crush on one of them (but I don't remember much else about them). The other guy kept shooting endangered birds... I told him to stop, but he killed another; three total. He said it was so we could eat have a whole bird for dinner that night. A ranger came by and the guy hid the birds. Then we left.



Fragment: Shooting Stars and Fireworks

I was with Kristin and her boyfriend in my driveway at night. There was going to be a fireworks show in the neighborhood, so we were getting ready to watch. As we looked up, Kristin saw a shooting star. I looked up, and there was this huge fireball shooting star.



When Are You Due?

I was with Zukin in the back room of my Oma's house, where the kids usually play. She had this little contraption with her, that would act as a baby, or something. It was a project for school; she had to take care of it for a month. I helped her watch it and take care of it; I was feeding it in my dream (how one feeds a small bean-shaped ball of metal/plastic, I know not), and burping it. At the end of a month, a little age meter on the side of it would read one-year-old.

For some reason, we had to leave Oma's really quickly, and Josh was there to drive us to my house. Except when we got to my house, something was wrong, and so he drove us along the path through the "park" behind my house, and when it went through the woods, he went off the path, downhill. I remember thinking, Oh dear lord! and clutching the side of the vehicle. It was a sort of dune-buggy type thing, and I was sitting in the back seat to the right, while Zukin was sitting behind me, facing backwards (like in a golf cart. Actually, maybe we were in a golf cart. It's a little fuzzy). Josh hit a small bump and Zukin nearly fell out, so I offered for her to come sit with me. She says, "Oh my Bhuda, thanks," and instead of sitting next to me, she sits on my lap.

I'm still holding the "baby" contraption, and we pass a family who is having a picnic in the woods behind their own house. They say hello nicely, and so we stop for a moment to say hello back, and the mother sees the "baby" and asks me, "Oh, when are you due?" With a cheerful smile.

"Uh. In a month?" I was confused my the question; apparently they gave those contraptions to all women who were pregnant with their first baby, too? She thought I was pregnant. We left then, and Josh was worried that those people were going to call the police because we were driving a golf-cart-thing through their property, but I said, "Don't worry, these are all nice people. Besides the woods have always basically been free for all to use."



Adultery and Burning Dogs

I was a married man living in one of those cookie-cutter homes in a development. It was winter. I was having an affair with the neighbor's wife, and neither of our spouses knew about it. As far as they were aware, we just spoke friendly with each other like good neighbors should.

One night, I was in bed with my wife, and she was fast asleep. I was wide awake, and wanted to be with my neighbor, so I snuck out of the house through the front door. I had my PJs on still, but had put on a pair of nice dress shoes because I didn't want my feet to get cold. I was careful to be as quiet as I could be, but the snow was unbearably loud. Every step I took was about 10-times louder than it should have been; I was afraid my wife was going to wake up, so I tried to hurry to the neighbor's driveway, which was much better plowed than ours was...

I was almost there when I saw a light turn on inside, and my only thought was "SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT." I hurried around a corner, and just as I was turning it, I saw out of the corner of my eyes the door opening and my wife looking out, spotting me, and getting that crazed look on her face.

The feeling that overwhelmed me is really hard for me to describe. It was the kind of feeling you get when you get caught while in the act of doing something bad, and still run away as fast as you can but as quietly as you can. Maybe it was more like the feeling when you're playing a game of hide and seek with your friends, and you know they're almost done counting even though you haven't found a good spot, and so you panic and rush and do silly things, all while trying not to let the seeker hear your distress; that excited but frantic feeling. It's like... I knew there was absolutely nothing I could say to justify my being about to enter the neighbor's house (when my wife and I both knew that our neighbor's husband was out of town on a business trip for another day and a half).

Rather than going inside the neighbor's house, I run around in a roundabout way to confuse my wife as she followed my footprints in the snow, all the while avoiding the dog, who was sleeping right outside the door, and then got cornered and crouched behind a bush. It wasn't a very good hiding spot because the pine needles of the bush were thinly distributed. I could see beyond it just as well as my wife would be able to see me if she looked; and I knew she was looking. It's dark, maybe she won't actually be able to see me... but just as I thought that, the moon came out from behind a cloud and my wife looked right at me. She walked toward me menacingly. I noticed for the first time that she held something red in her hand; a grill lighter. I was freaking out that she was going to set fire to our neighbor's house (I guess she was a bit of a nutter even before I had the affair. Maybe that's what made me cheat on her in the first place. Who knows)...

But she looked at me, and then at the dog, and then back at me. She grinned evilly, crazily, and bent down to set fire to the dog. She held the lighter out in three different spots, the way you would light a fire; cover more area. Amazingly, the dog didn't wake up until its fur was already catching. I ran out of the bush to try to pat the dog out, and my wife laughed and then went back into our own home. The dog was whimpering and I finally managed to get the fire out, leaving the poor thing with only minor burns. I opened the front door to my neighbor's house went inside with the dog, and got it some water before heading to the bedroom. I knew where it was because I'd been there many times before. When she heard me approaching, and called out, "Honey, is that you? What are you doing back so early? I thought you'd be out for another day or so?" And then she came out of the bedroom, saw me in my messy PJs, the dog with her burn marks, and my slightly dazed expression. "What happened?" She asked, walking toward me.

Then I woke up.



Fragment: Drain-O

I was volunteering at an elementary school with Zukin, and there was some sort of sickness going around. It was deadly, and all the kids had it, and the teachers were catching it as well. For SOME reason, the cure to this sickness was a hat I had on; it was a bright orange ball-cap, and if I wore it, I was immune to the sickness and anyone who looked at me would be cured. Dream logic FTW.

But the hat got ruined somehow (I don't remember how; it may have already been ruined when the dream started), and Zukin and I were trying to fix it. Eventually we did fix it, but Zukin had clogged the drain in the sink somehow, and it was like new again, and I put it on. It looked normal on me, but when Zukin tried to wear it, it turned into this floppy green thing with white lace hanging over her ears and part of her forehead. So I put it back on, and we called the Kindergarten teacher into his office, where we'd been working. "We got the Cure-Hat fixed! But the sink got clogged."

"No worried, I have Drain-O." The teacher (who was attractive in that way 50-yr old men can sometimes be) took a tiny bottle of Drain-O out of his pocket (why he had it, no one knows) and put a few drops into the sink, which had water all the way up to the brim. Those few drops were somehow enough, and it instantly started to drain. The Drain-O smelled EXACTLY like liquid NyQuil.

I wake up from my usual night's sleep in order to go to the restroom. Don't recall my dreams. When I get back, I settle in, noting in my mind that this would be a good time for a lucid attempt, and then I allow myself to drift off.

One of the ways I initiate lucid dreaming is visualization. My particular mode is exploring an environment in my head, in detail. I know I'm entering the dream when the environment becomes easier to explore and more unpredictable. Sometimes there is a sense of "breaking the tension" and moving into lucidity. Sometimes it's more gentle. Sometimes I feel like things are still fuzzy and don't get the clarity I want. Like all lucid techniques, it's a mixed bag.

I grab onto the first location that drifts into my mind - an old apartment I used to live in. I am outside on the front lawn. I walk down the lawn and across the street and head for a stream that is on the other side of the complex. It is lined on either side by thick trees that were simply never knocked down by the developer.

When I reach the stream, I begin my explorations. I decide to do something I did there a lot as a child - look for rocks that would look good once they had been through a rock tumbler. I pick up a few rocks and examine them, but don't see anything I like. I continue walking down the stream, splashing my feet in the water.

The stream becomes larger and deeper. I have reached a part of the stream that no longer looks familiar. I note that my visualization has become more intense. I walk from the center of the stream to the bank on the side, which has become muddy. As I continue walking, the stream becomes deeper and more turbulent, and has cut deeper into the banks. The banks have gone from the soft dark brown of midwestern soil to a burnt sienna color, and are gaining more of a texture of clay. If anybody has been to Georgia, they may know the color of soil I'm talking about.

The stream has become closer to a river. I imagine that a "duck" style vehicle could probably float down it now. For some reason, a roller coaster is now running along the side of the bank, but it isn't full scale. I take note of it. I try to assess my dream state, but it still feels "thin". There's not really much clarity, and I feel like trying to exert direct influence right now may cause it to fall apart.

The roller coaster has disappeared. I now see a pristine snow drift and a snow-covered hill leading upward from the river bank. I decide to see where the snow leads.

I begin walking through the snowy area. The snow becomes deeper, and as I continue forward, I start having trouble walking through it. I am heading up a steep hill, struggling through the snow. I look up the hill, and realize it leads up a mountain. I look down and I can see the path I've made through the snow. The stream is nowhere in sight - I'm now on a mountain in a mountain range. This is the tallest mountain. It's daytime, and the sky is very blue against the sparkling white snow.

I decide to continue heading upward to see what is up there. The sky becomes darker. The snow is almost up to my chest, and the way up is still very steep. I have no climbing equipment, so I flounder and climb the best I can. At this point, I feel like I am "deep" enough in the dream to start changing things, but I'm genuinely curious as to where this all leads.

Upward, in the distance, wind is picking snow up off the drifts and driving it in swirls across the mountainside. Through the wind and snow, nestled under a massive overhang in the rock of the mountain, I see... a fortress? Castle? It's made of stone. There are no lights; even though it is aesthetically beautiful, in a cold way, all of the openings look defense-oriented - places for archers or people with spears. The only place I see a dim light is what I assume is the entrance.

I reach the door. There is a flat area of stone that forms sort of a "landing", a level area carved out of the rock and laid with decorative stonework. A large, wooden door leads to what I assume is the interior of the fortress. The aesthetic is quite Gothic (but think of something in the style of Rheinstein Castle, not something like Cologne Cathedral). There are lights on either sides of the door, but interestingly, they seem more like gaslights than torches. The wood is stained a warm brown color and the fittings look like they are made of bronze.

There is a lever to open the door in front of it. I ponder how that really isn't very, you know, secure, but I get the feeling that not everybody is actually able to pull it. Only certain people can. I pull it with no problem, though. The door opens.

I walk into a gallery with an extremely high ceiling. There are massive chandeliers lit with huge candles, I count about 8 of them, and each one looks like it is the size of a small room. They look a little... Victorian. The whole thing seems cathedral-esque, but when I examine the gallery, I see that there are actually walkways high up on either side where archers could perch. Anybody trying to march through here could be easily sniped.

I'm not sure what I'm expecting. There are 2 doors at the very end of the gallery. The one to the right is open, and in the room there is a small screen, and it seems to be a bedroom of some sort, which I think is kind of weird. Then I realize it's a place for guards to rest, where they could easily access the gallery, so this might be an area that also leads to barracks. I still think it's a really weird layout. I go through the door that is right in front of me, though.

It leads to a dark room with stone walls and outlets to a hallway on either side. I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this. The scenery still feels blurry and not 100% real, which is also a bit frustrating.

I walk through the door directly across me. I am in another room with high ceilings and a large chandelier. Things are getting blurry and kind of falling apart. The architecture is getting weird and I feel like it's getting "wrong". I begin to feel frustrated. I'm still trying to look for a throne room, or something, but I keep encountering weird rooms like this that just don't seem to fit the layout right. I'm looking for a dream character of any sort of significance, at this point, since I haven't really seen anybody.

There's another screen with someone behind it... I look around for a person. I'm actually looking around for what my dreamscape would consider to be the "leader" of this place, but instead, a woman who looks like a nanny appears. I don't know what small children she'd be minding, I assumed the ones of the head of the castle. At the time, I assumed there would be some, but now that I think about it there don't seem to be any. I think they might be around, but I don't see any. I should have talked to her, and asked what was up, but I didn't. I have an irritating tendency to stay silent during these dreams.

I can't get the DC I want to appear. I wake up.

The castle is cool, though. Once I've been to a dream-location, it seems like it can be a little easier getting there again (cottage is still hard, though). I wish I had spent more time examining individual parts of the fortress, rather than just pressing onward. If I end up there again, I probably will.

I was walking through a New Mexican village in the middle of nowhere with my vest, belt, and Remington 700. People were giving me looks and I was looking for a bathroom. I came upon one of the three bathrooms in the village and there was a line of people waiting to use them. After standing for a while, Warner appeared and started joking around, making people laugh. He recognized me and we started talking about me moving out into a place in the middle of nowhere, and how peaceful it is. Amy was there also. Everyone cleared out and I went into a house full of girls to use their bathroom. All of them left and I got on their couch, which was also a toilet. I leave but return because I forgot to flush. All this time I'm aware of my rifle. I exit and look around. The view changes and I see a beautiful mountain range. I get in my car and drive around, checking out the houses in the village and think "Must suck to be the UPS guy that delivers out here"
I'm suddenly in a UPS facility being welcomed by a good looking skinny guy with greying hair. He gives me and a bunch of other people welcome gifts and takes us around. I see the girl who, when I saw delivering in Santa Fe, I thought was cute run up to her driver, who was a female. We kept walking and I asked if Mark that worked in Los Lunas was still here. The man said yeah and I asked to be put with him next week since it was the last week of something. The man said "Yeah I will" and I got excited. We entered a facility and I saw Antoinette. She was waiting for a door to close before she pushed the button for the lift we were on to go up. She was complaining about her supervisors, saying "Yeah I sometimes see their stinkin' heads looking at me making sure I wait till the damn doors open" I recognized her voice and called her, saying hi. I told her I'd tell her I had a dream about her next time I saw her. We had to go through a very hard obstacle course that was high up. One girl failed and they were gonna make her do it again. I thought the obstacle course was really hard, even for a person who knew parkour. I jumped on a mini trampoline and my ankle got caught in a hole. I got up and someone behind me said, "Careful, we live in NM and have the ability to swallow brain power..." meaning that most people don't know how to think properly and it doesn't really matter if we wait. I laughed and woke up laughing.

Dream
False Awakening

I was at work with C. Williams, Fabian, and Rafe. We had a busy day and I was the runner. We stopped a few places and then at an Albertsons. As I'm walking out, I start arguing with a black guy, He pulls out a little revolver on me and I put my hands up. He gets close enough for me to grab the gun and I grab it, trying to keep the gun away from pointing at me. I eventually let go and pull out my pistol and shoot rounds at him. He runs into the Albertsons and I run after him. When I enter, I reload. I chase the man through the iles and eventually come face-to-face with him. I take out my pepper spray and spray him. I close my eyes and yell, expecting me to have to come in contact with the spray. I open my eyes and find out I didn't so I keep spraying him and eventually tackle him to the ground and get him ready to be handcuffed. Chris Williams is next to me and I yell "I need cuffs!" A cop comes up and helps me cuff him. I wake up start writing down my dream. Then I really wake up.