side notes

non-dream dream lucid

I was looking forward to this morning. Really was.
Made an improved alarm clock, with louder volume, and a reality check reminder (with 10 sound clips firing randomly every 30 minutes).

Even cleaned off my bed and tried laying on my back for an SSILD.
And that's when things started to go bad.
At first, my bed wasn't that clean even after I'd wiped it off, so I still felt like I had dirt on me.

And then I had an upset stomach, so it was very hard to concentrate on anything.
So I decided to go to sleep.


So I end up waking up like 2 hours into the 4 hour clock, and everyone else in the house is starting to wake up in ernest so there's loads of sounds.
Ended up staying up for 30 minutes or so, so this should be an ideal WBTB.
Since it's waaay too late for FILD, I try SSILD again.
It's actually pretty interesting, I actually get to the point where my hands and feet feel really heavy and almost numb. But that's as far as I get.
Once again, I don't feel comfortable enough. My pillow is too tall so my neck hurts and I'm getting a headache.

So I decide to get up and switch sides, sleeping on the other side of the bed. This is much better and I'm able to get a bit farther into SSILD before the discomfort rears its ugly self.

Eventually I turn myself over and sleep on my front side, and it has quite an improvement in that I'm actually able to go to sleep. It's almost impossible to concentrate on SSILD cycles though. I remember at one point I actually get to the point where bits of dreams start to form.

I remember thinking to myself, "I want to see a giant bird! ". Almost immediately I'm greeted with an image of something that looks like a cross between a parrot and a hornbill. I never actually saw how big it was but I assume it was larger than the bushes it was around.

Similar experiences permeated the next 15 or so minutes.
At the end I just decided to give up and fall asleep normally.

Ended up having a few dreams that I can't recall, and one that I can recall in some detail.

------
The visit from OTG
Fragmented: no
Lucid: no
TGMG: no
Recall rating: 5

So I'm looking into the jeep, and everything's all poppy green. The windows are all mossed over.
Next thing I know Overthegun comes in the door. I'm thinking "This is really weird".

He ends up going into the bedroom and laying down on my bed where my mom is. I go into the bedroom, laying on the pile of clothing opposite the bed, and watch. I'm thinking to myself "What the actual fuck is going on here".

End up running into the living room, where I look on my computer, where the WJR jingle is loaded up. I think "Right, this would be interesting to show to OTG since he's british" .

That's when I wake up, laying there in my bed. It's around 1400 again. I'm tired, so I end up drifting in and out of sleep for the next 30 or so minutes, but never deep enough to dream, or even forget the dream entirely.

Once I get up, I look at my laptop, JUST as the countdown clock is hitting zero. Once it does, nothing happens. No sound. "Great, my alarm clock doesn't work at all". Neither did the reality check reminder. Might have to remake them in C or something.

Once I finally got to the point where I was willing to make a DJ entry I'd considered the dream too messed up to enter. This is the first time DJing it in full.

Dream recall chart for last 5 or so days:

Attached Thumbnails

 

I'm really sorry, I couldn't came here these days.
But I wrote all my dreams (at least the ones I could remember) in a notebook.

non-dream dream lucid

Once again, I was awake to some insane time. Went to sleep around 5 in the morning.

I am in some yellowish transparent tunnel. I walk through for a bit until I somehow teleport to my sister's kitchen.
I look around, and the kitchen is a bit larger than waking life.
There's carpet on the floor and a sink next to the fridge (fridge is on the back wall in waking life).

All of a sudden I become lucid. I increase awareness, and it feels like real life. I look into the living room, and the carpet is gray, and it looks like a DC is watching TV? The window curtains are closed but you can tell its day out.

I walk into the living room and all of a sudden I'm walking a dog on a leash in a park of some kind. It's day out, and there's a few trees around but for the most part it's clear.
I'm walking on a road, with some kind of ditch running along side it.

All of a sudden I see a bunch of cats in the ditch.
They're all playing with each other.
I kind of lose lucidity at this point, but I still have a bit of awareness.
I look at the cats and it seems most of them are white.
There's a few kittens around here as well.

I then see dog shit on the path.

This is all I can remember.
I recall other images, too fleeting to actually integrate with the plot.
I recall becoming lucid another time but can't remember it.
I also seem to remember something to do with SNES games.

I would like to note that when I had woken up from the dream, I remembered all this much more coherently, but if you could get me out of bet at that moment to DJ it I'd be impressed.

despite all that, this is the most immersive dream I've had a loooooong time.

I might edit this post later if I remember something new.

I was planning to test WBTB + FILD this morning but I stayed up to watch overthegun's livestream.
Ended up going to sleep around 5am (!) and didn't remember any dreams.

I've been practicing all day awareness (it's hard when you can't be 100% aware of absolutely everything) as well.


The only things I can remember is a bunch of gray.

I’m driving with someone in a van. I’m excited to use the cruise control feature (more like auto-drive) since I suck so much at driving. There was something about wanting to try out a ‘drive to destination’ feature.

We’re looking for an angel. I see three different people in tan trench coats, although one had a black shirt and the coat was around their waist or something – but none of them are the right one.

We do end up picking up this older woman (maybe the black-shirt?). She needs help getting somewhere. I think I felt unease around her.

We had to stop at a bathroom. There was more than one room so I found my own one with a lot of stalls.

Problem was, I couldn’t seem to find one with a toilet in it. I ended up going into one with a weird, metal, tall and wide sink, but end up making a mess trying to use it.

When I get out, of the stall, the older woman had apparently been waiting for me the whole time. There was the feeling that she finally got to show her true colors and do something to me.

Inspirations: Driving from last dream. Yay auto-drive. Angel from me having looked at a post I reblogged on Tumblr with Castiel in it, who wears a tan trench coat in Supernatural.

1.
I’m standing on my tippy-toes up on my bed reaching for something (on the ceiling fan?), wearing the same thing I went to sleep in - my Superman logo shirt.

I come to realize that I’m awake and really am standing on my bed. I wobble back down, feeling confused, before I craw back under the cover and go back to sleep.

2.
Hanging around a house. There’s an autistic boy and his cat. The cat is super friendly, I remember petting it when it snuggled against me.

I played a Pokemon game with him.

I looked in a bottom drawer of something at three of his books.

Jump.

I’m on a porch with a roof with him. We suddenly burst into dance with some music playing. I’m really letting loose, doing all kinds of moves including some flips, which is dangerous because I’m wearing the same clothes as IWL, a white shirt with a butterfly on it and a very long, wavy blue skirt.

We finish, and a group of elderly people pop up outside the windows of the porch that weren’t there before. I realize that we had probably disturbed them, our neighbors, with our noise.

But then suddenly they break out into a choreographed dance! But then when I look at them, there are also mid-aged clones of the same chubby guy. I think how vigorous the dancing is, and how good it would be for losing weight. I turn and ask “How often do they do this?’

After they’re done, one of them hands me a PaperBackSwap book in the default white wrapper. I get excited and open it, but unfold a piece of paper from it. It’s a notice that I’d have to go pick it up since I missed the delivery.

It says I actually have to go to their house to get the book, which I think is bullcrap. Part of the address has ‘Metville’ in it although I remember thinking upon recalling it that it was something else. There was also something written in big print letters on a black square.

Inspirations: I got a PBS book recently, the notice might have been because I was worried about getting my credit for sending off a book. Pokemon from reading past dream entries. Where did the dancing come from?? Need.more.dancing! Waait the dancing may have been inspired by a mod for Dragon Age: Origins! Yesterday I had everyone dance to a folk song in Camp. Chubby guys most likely from The Biggest Loser, since I had just looked at my paper and saw it was coming on the next night.

1.
Cullen was a Red Templar, glowing red like the one in the Gameplay Features – Choice & Consequences video that I recently watched.

2.
I’m driving, heading somewhere, but I’m lost. I look at a ‘map’, and the street I’m looking for, my old house on Renee Lane, is marked with a blue line.

Gap.

I pull out from where and am nervous because I have to drive in a procession with other vehicles. The car is so big (or I am so small) that I can’t reach the pedals. I get down and press the gas with my hands and somehow rev the engine at the same time.

I do my usual insane dream driving and there’s a wreck. But not caused by me for once! It seems that the people in the car at the front jumped out.

Gap.

A group of people are set up on the side of the road recovering and stuff. Apparently I had to replace my shirt. I saw one that might be mine and put it on. Then I looked down and realized it wasn’t. It was black and had some kind of writing on it. I had somehow managed to grab my ‘boyfriend’s’ shirt.

Gap.

Mom’s showing me a book that’s supposed to be familiar. It says “Yellow _?_” on the front and it’s the second book in a series.

Inspirations: On the last episode of Z-Nation, a guy jumped out of a morgue vault and pretty much killed himself. For the book, I’ve been looking at a lot of books in the last week.

Side-notes: I still find it amazing how many little things throughout the day make it into my dreams. I wonder if I put some special notice into them or what? Just been thinking of the implications and ideas to do with it.

1.
Mom was singing with a boy and man. I liked one of the songs a lot and asked her for it, but she got annoyed. I said ‘never mind’ and went to my room, closing the door.

2.
A man (Man 1) walking into a central room on a spaceship. Another man (Man 2) that seems familiar to me (I remember his looks but can’t describe them ._.) is standing facing away, hands clasped behind his back. Memory’s real fuzzy here. The man who walked in asks the other what his preferences are – he wants them to get involved with this third man (Man 3) to help him or something.

Jump.

Man 1 is flirting/roughhousing with Spider-man and laughing. From a distance to the left, Man 2 and Spider-man are watching the scene thoughtfully. It had the feel of Man 2 showing him something to make a point.

3.
I’m playing a game. It’s like Mario in that you control little characters, directing them on a map to the place you want to go. I choose a little creature that reminds me of a fiery red Pac-Man and direct him to a nearby place.

It looks a lot like a Mario area but more surreal. I end up making my character fling to the far left and have to make my way back to where I started, ignoring loot and things I see, which is hard. I wonder what skills he has besides the basic attack, and manage to find where to look. I’m surprised to see it has two Frost skills, because I had assumed it was a Fire creature.

It’s blurry here, but ‘I’ and some other people are negotiating or something but it goes bad, and turns into a big fight. I’m stealthily moving northward around the action.

Huge golems are hurling rocks over to the left towards me. I as my dwarf Erde dodge them. As I pass the golems, I think about what I should be going after in the fight, but end up completely bypassing everything to go down the north corridor.

I’m looking through the rooms when my sister comes up and seems to be looking for something. From here on, I felt like I knew a step ahead what was going on. I knew she was looking for her child that I hadn’t known about before. I keep looking for the place the child would be hiding. I see a blanket seat in a closet at one point.

”Read the letter,” She says as she looks in a closet to the right in the room at the end, calling out the boy’s name (which I can’t remember). There’s a folded up white piece of paper on a pile of blankets(?) on the floor.

“This one?” I ask as I unfold it and glance over it. It doesn’t make much sense, but I know it’s supposed to be a letter telling me about the child.

Gap.

I’m looking at a blue box of corndogs, and there’s a quote on it from my sister and a friend about how they’d conceived the babies on accident. The friend’s name was something like ‘Gosh’ but I knew it really meant the red-headed friend Rane had long ago. I felt that something was kind of off with that.

Inspiration: Playing Dragon Age: Origins, just finished the Deep Roads stuff recently. My sister and her child might have come from the dwarf commoner’s sister Rica, or from my own sister and a previous dream. We did have a box of corndogs a few weeks ago that I thought about recently.

From November 3rd.

I’m at a pharmacy with a group of people to get medicine. We’re directed to another line to the left. I get mine but someone with me points out that he gave me the wrong one. I look at the carton box and see the brand name and ‘Energy’ under it. Mine isn’t supposed to have that.

I get back in line, and I think I skip ahead of someone to the right who’s leaning on the counter, and get it exchanged. I figure the Energy one must have been accidentally put in the wrong place.

Jump.

I climb the counter in a house’s kitchen and look in the medicine cabinet. I see different kinds of meds, one a being a clear bottle with purple energy medicine in it. I take a sip against my better judgment, because I know I’m about to go sleep.

In a room, I had my moved my bare blue small mattress (actually my old twin-sized one IWL) over to the left on the floor. I have a stereo playing. I realize one of the halves of the green curtain over the door fell. I fix it, then cover both sides with a yellow curtain. Part of me thinks this is weird.

I realize that I can’t even hear the stereo that’s on in the kitchen so I may as well turn it off and just keep mine going (even though I can’t see it).

I remember wondering if the energy stuff I took was affecting me.

Inspirations: I had a conversation with mom about not drinking the Energy flavored water anymore but I have one left so I put a tiny amount of that in my jug whenever I make up some flavored water. Meds part comes from being nervous about my doctor’s appointment mixed with the energy drink thing. We actually do have a yellow curtain at the bottom of the stairs. The stereo part comes from me having to turn off dad's iPod radio in the kitchen yet again because he’s got his headphones on in the other room and can’t hear it anyway.

From November 3rd.

1.
Something big is happening. A woman is looking to me for answers. I consult some kind of book in my hands, and say that ‘it wasn’t ‘supposed to happen like this’. Something about an illustration of a cloud of brown stuff.

Inspiration: It made me think of Orzammar (in Dragon Age: Origins) so it may’ve had something to do with dwarves.

2.
I’m offered one of three “legendary creatures” that I can pick from a plain-looking bag.

Gap.

It’s a black bird, like a crow in size but a bit smaller and lighter colored.

I use a special call to communicate with it by blowing down into my thumbnail.

I meet a guy who’s intrigued by it. The bird turns out to be his father but none of us know this. The guy’s mother makes an appearance at some point.

Fixing a shoe or something by putting it in another shoe?

Inspiration: The bag and creatures reminds me a lot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and I was thinking about HP recently.

I wasn't practicing seriously for the last couple weeks as I felt too busy with work to devote much time to journaling, so my motivation to LD was also low (because successful attempts commit me to hours of writing if I'm going to record them right). Last night I felt more motivated so instead of playing video games late at night I went to bed early (11:30pm, early for me anyway) and put in a solid WILD attempt, with a full two-hour WBTB (from 1:45am when I woke up naturally until 3:45) followed by 14 minutes seated meditation and the usual counting ritual on returning to bed.

The attempt felt promising as I didn't fall asleep too quickly but maintained liminal awareness for awhile, and it was around 4:15am when I finally went back to sleep. However I did not achieve a WILD, and experienced nothing but an extremely vague NLD (something about a shoot-out, I was a young man in Vietnam I think, maybe during the war, the guys on my side had a sort of built structure to take positions in but it was full of rats, and my character felt very uncomfortable about the rats).

I woke up again at 6:30am and was desperate enough to take galantamine, even though I hate the after-effects and it hardly works for me anymore. This was followed by another vaguely-recalled dream which involved distinct manifestations of dream control (elaborate flying and levitation, which felt like I was deliberately testing the limits of my abilities) but very little dream awareness. At the end I was having what felt like a very meaningful conversation with a DC, but I don't remember what we talked about. It felt like there was great complexity to this dream as well as the previous one but my recollection was not sufficient to preserve it.

At 8:30am I woke up again, realized I had another bust, and as a last resort tried my vibrating alarm. I felt it go off three times but each time it jostled me out of sleep and I didn't feel like there was much I could do dream-wise, nor did I remember any dreams of note. The last time I at least remembered to try to DEILD but the REM atonia was apparently already broken, so it didn't work. I've always been able to instinctively DEILD-chain my WILDs, even before I knew what it was called, but for some reason that is the only situation in which I've been able to pull it off. Woke up for the final time at 9:30am and now I'm frustrated enough to declare a dryspell. Writing a report anyway because it was a deliberate attempt and also so that my mind can't use the break from journaling as an excuse for not dreaming properly.

Another sludgy dream last night. The clarity is picking up a little, but not much. I'm sort of on a dry spell. I was driving with S to my college and I pulled over and made S get out because we were running low on gas.
I then drove about half a mile to a gas station, and pulled up. I was ready to pump the gas and realized that I had to go pee. I was also thinking that I should go back and get S where I left him, by the side of the road.
I went into the gas station and in the bathroom, for some reason, there was no toilet, just a large PVC pipe sticking out of the floor. The gas station was doing maintenance or something, and I figured It was where the toilet was supposed to attach, and that I could just do my business in it.
So I'm doing my thing and I realize that this situation is actually rather absurd, so I start reality checking. For some reason it takes two nose pinches and a host mental questions for me to properly become lucid. When I became lucid, I realized that if I was having dreams about peeing, that I might have to get up and go to the bathroom, otherwise I could wet the bed. So, I simply woke myself up.

Well I didn't have to go to the bathroom in WL. Kind of wasted a lucid there.

I was thinking about something on the drive to college. When I started lucid dreaming, three and a half years ago, my goal was nightly lucidity. I would sometimes say to myself that I wanted to 'become' a natural lucid dreamer. To be honest that is still my goal, and I getting closer. I have about one lucid dream a week now, and no shortage of close calls and partially lucid moments in-between. I'm really not that far off from my goal, but there is still work to be done.
Late October was a good time for me, and now I seem to be in a bit of a slump. Probably due to stress in WL. I was thinking about holding off on lucid dreaming a little bit this next week or so, letting the dry spell blow over and focusing more on issues in waking life. Because for me to be truly happy, both my waking life and my dream life have to exist harmoniously. So I might be a little less active in this next week or two. By no means will I stop posting, but I might only log on once a day to lay out a quick nonlucid DJ entry.
Back on the topic of my nightly lucidity goal. I was thinking about how all too often I forget that I shouldn't just be focused on the end result, but perhaps the journey along the way, too. This hasn't always been an easy mindset to have for lucid dreaming. To me, I always thought of 'completing one level before moving onto the next'. By that I mean, attaining nightly recall before I started practicing lucid techniques. Then, attaining nightly lucidity before practicing stabilization techniques. Then, I with a consistent means to lucid dream, I could learn stabilization and dream control with no shortage of windows to practice. But that isn't the way it's happened for me, or anybody else. I've been developing all of those skills little by little. So I'm going to try and change my mindset; lucid dreaming is an adventure to be had, in all of its stages.

Dreams from November 2nd.

1.
I’m talking to a girl, I ask her something like “What do you think about this?’ as I point (to a bookshelf?). She ignores me, her face almost slack, and I realize ‘I’m not dreaming anymore’(??). I come to realize I’m sitting up in bed, awake.

2.
Outside (out back at grandma’s house?), there’s a little girl to the left jumping on the pad of a really tall, green flower. For a split second I think how dangerous that is, and then she slips off. On the ground, she says something about how she should have known that would happen.

Directly ahead, a younger girl is playing in a square patch of grass the size of a dinner table.

Something about me walking out of a room and seeing a young boy. He says something about ‘you saw, didn’t you’. Suddenly I ‘knew’ he was talking about how he hadn’t flushed the toilet.

I’m not sure if I was sleeping in the dream or what, but I jump out of bed(?) because of some noise I hear. It’s police sirens. They were there for the boy next door. I hear them talking to him through the wall. They’re prescribing him some medicine for whatever issue he has that caused the problem.

Just as me and Rane are about to discuss something, she says something about wanting to help the boy with something. I tell her that we’ll finish this conversation later, and she agrees.

Side-note: There was definitely more bits to this but I convinced myself I had already woken up too much/was too tired to type up more dreams. By the time I got myself to sit up the details and order of events were gone.

Inspirations: A similar-ish scene happened at my sister’s where she hadn’t flushed the toilet when I went to go, and there was a pregnancy test in the trash – she asked me if I’d seen, afterwards. Once, the police actually did come here because a young boy getting in trouble. And there was one time the police did come at night because our neighbor was driving drunk… Medicine most likely comes from me being nervous about my appointment to check my thyroid levels and up my dosage.

Date: 30 Oct

I woke up before my scheduled wbtb and had heavy insomnia. Used it as an unavoidable wbtb and concentrated on ld thoughts in the midst of all other unnecessary for this time of the night thoughts. I was super tired and my recall is rather bad.

As I am in bed, waiting for sleep, I get a few strong flash dream scenes that look promisingly engaging but those interrupt. I am very tired at this point to follow any transitions and just want to sleep.

A brief fragment where I emerge on a balcony fully entering the scene. There is an inviting flat roof nearby and I want to cross over, but it's far away. I lean forward and move in its direction and the distance shortens which enables me to do it. Memory about this happening a lot in nlds (yes). I also notice that I automatically continue walking on all fours, something which I recall also happens during nlds.

Memory gap.

A nld in some place that feels like ours. An uninvited guest makes an appearance and I wonder about that. Could it be a dream? It'd better be. I abandon the whole situation and spend some mostly unmemorable time walking around the place, just going from room to room, opening doors, etc. This helps me acquire a bit of clarity of mind and to hold the dream at the same time.

Bf is also here and after a while of room wandering, I stop and face his DC. I have a brief moment of conscious thought about doing anything with him. We start kissing but then I recall I really wanted to do the pumpkin task. The bathroom is right ahead and I go there picturing a pumpkin, which I see just below a chair or a crate of some sort. Initially it is a normal pumpkin, but then it turns into one made of paper. I rip open the top and peek to see what's inside - a number of halloween chocolate treats in different colors. I feel satisfied with the task, make a mental note and walk back to the other room. (Without trying any). Then I come back to make sure I got the details right, the treats are still there.

I think the dream must have ended soon after that, it seems I went into much deeper sleep that messed up my recall.