side notes

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.

I don't remember much from the first dream I can remember from last night. I do remember being at a museum where supposedly the first "selfie" from the year 1010 could be found. It wasn't taken with a camera, of course, and it was actually a complete accident. Apparently a family had gone skydiving and the imprint from where their faces had hit the ground became fossilized, so this "selfie" was just a fossilized impression of people's faces. I was disappointed when I saw it, though. It was just a chalk outline of where the people had fallen, and someone had actually drawn these people on the piece of rock, which I thought was kind of wrong because it was in a cartoonish style and therefore inaccurate.

After that, I recall talking with some guy about Cruisin' USA (an old N64 racing game I used to have; I eventually traded it in a few years ago because, every time nostalgia told me to play that game, I was let down by the awful graphics and the cars' terrible handling). We then heard music from that game coming from somewhere nearby, so we started wandering around the floor of my residence hall trying to figure out which room someone was playing it in.

I woke up from that and had another strange dream when I went back to sleep. My parents were both visiting me at college, and I recommended that they see the Rocky Horror Show (my school's theater production this semester). I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard it's awesome. At some point, I remember noticing that my parents had left, so I started looking for them to see if they were still around. I ran out through the back door (I was in my house now for some reason - technically my old house, but my family just moved this summer, and I've hardly spent any time in the new house because I left for college a few days after we moved and have only been home for one weekend since). When I didn't see my parents there, I ran out the front door and saw my mom's car still in the driveway... packed full of my fraternity Brothers. That was confusing at first, but then they all shouted, "Thank you for helping your mother!" It turned out my mom was in the car too and had recruited them all to say that for some reason.

I woke up again but went back to sleep again. In this next dream, there was a floor event in my residence hall. I saw Jackie, one of my fraternity Brothers (we refer to everyone as a Brother regardless of gender), which surprised me because I didn't know she lived on my floor or even in my building (in reality, she does not). Anyway, the "event" was that everyone would be given a big crossword puzzle to take with them and do throughout the day, and whoever finished it first could return it to get a prize.

For some reason, at some point, we ended up outside by a road intersection off-campus. I decided to leave early and return to campus, which is when things started getting strange. By the time I was back on campus, I found it really hard to walk forward. There was some slight wind at the time, so I thought that could be attributed to the wind, but the wind didn't seem strong enough to interfere with walking. I thought it was strange, but I saw that everyone else was affected in the same way, so I figured it was probably just the wind after all.

When I got back to my dorm, I realized I'd forgotten to take a crossword puzzle from the event, so I decided to text Jackie to ask her if she could bring one back for me, but I didn't have her number, and I didn't know who else I could ask. I also remember getting a bunch of texts from my boyfriend throughout this dream and the last that I felt kind of bad about not having the time to reply to.

The dream suddenly because a Sims 3 game, and, since time can be sped up in the game, I accidentally fast-forwarded time (on the fastest setting) to a couple hours later before finally pausing it. I knew for sure now that I wouldn't be able to ask Jackie to get me a crossword puzzle because there's no way that "event" would still be going on. I also felt bad about not replying to my boyfriend's texts now that even more time had passed.

I realized after awhile that something didn't look quite right about the game interface, though I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was that was different. I did an RC when I noticed that and counted six fingers. I was dreaming! I counted again just to make sure. Seven fingers. Definitely dreaming! Instead of being all clueless as usual when I become lucid, I said out loud, "Now, this is where the fun begins."

Since I had no plan for the dream, I ran around, looking for something fun to do in a dream (I was no longer playing Sims anymore). I found a buffet table. I could eat! No, no, that's something I can do while I'm awake. Then, I spotted an empty glass and an empty silver pitcher on the table and decided now it was time to learn to exert some control over the dream. I decided that, if I poured the "empty" pitcher into the cup, I'd be pouring a drink out of it instead of nothing. I decided it'd be "something like eggnog" (the first thing that came to mind), but not quite the same, because why drink something in a dream I can drink in real life? The drink that came out was white and a little thick, but it didn't taste at all like eggnog. It was creamy, though, and kind of sweet, and... fizzy? I was actually surprised when I tasted something that was slightly fizzy because I wasn't expecting that.

I realized while I was drinking it that I was wearing my retainer, and my reaction to that was my one fatal mistake. I decided I should take my retainer out, but, instead of doing something quick like tossing it on the floor (who cares what happens to it if it's a dream and not real life?), I decided to find the case for it and put it back in its case. That was my big mistake because everything went dark, so I realized I was waking up because this had torn me away from what was keeping me occupied. Once I started to feel myself lying in bed, I knew that was it. I opened my eyes, disappointed I'd caused myself to wake up because of something so silly but also proud of myself for having had some control over not just myself but the dream environment itself.

I did one final RC just to ensure I was awake. Five fingers. I counted again. Five fingers again. Yep, definitely awake this time.

I have noticed that my dreams have become quite violent in the recent weeks. I don't know why, but it is concerning. I am not worried about the actual violence of the dreams, but whatever is causing it. There is a lot of stress in my life at this time, but I don't know if it is due to that.

‘I’m’ on a ship that’s sailing through a body of water. It passes the same piece of log with ropes tied on it three times, and there was some story about sunken ship(s). As it gets to third one, one of three(?) girls mentions it worriedly. Another says something like ‘it’s just a legend’.

There’s a view of a boat ahead paddling past the log, and the left paddle almost hits a piece of wood sticking out from the log.

The ship is parked next to something like a sandbar in the water. The mood feels like a vacation, everyone’s preparing to relax and have fun. The girl who was worried before gets off the ship and goes onto the strip of sand stuff and feels safer there for some reason.

There’s a little girl playing on the circle at the end of the sandbar and a ‘ritzy’ couple sitting off to side with their small dog.

Scene changes to inside the ship. A couple is trying to have sex but their child keeps interrupting. The man tells her to go do something and not come back until she reaches ‘zero’.

The couple canoodling scene changes into one of a NC-17 rated horror scene, a mix between the Halloween movies, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Criminal Minds shows. I unfortunately remember parts of it and I woke up feeling sick and had a hard time getting back to sleep. So I’d rather not have to type it up. @_@

The girl’s voice sounds, saying ‘here there are’ and such. She brings a worker/cook (she’s wearing a uniform and apron) with her, who starts screaming when she sees the scene of carnage – and the killer who’s causing it. The killer reminds me of Jason and Michael. Think he was even wearing a mask, but he had near shoulder length kinky red-ish hair.

The girl is screaming too. They run. The girl had short, mousy brown hair and was about ten or eleven years old. The worker was middle-age or younger with her light-colored hair put up.

Tags: murder, disturbing, children, water, ships, dogs

This was a long dream, and I can't recall how all of these plot elements tied together. It started off with me going to some kind of frat party at my college. (Something I would NEVER do IWL, my introvert powers would make sure of that.)
I expected the party to be wild but for some reason, everyone is dressed up in fancy suits/coats and wearing those feathery eye masks. The party is mostly men, but there are a few women as well. The setting is fancy as well, the inside of the frat house is decorated in a sort of modern/oriental way. I recall the walls have this wood paneling and there is this beautifully carved bamboo furniture.
At some point or other, I was approached by some of the masked people. These were the leaders of the frat or something and they have masks that cover their entire faces. I think one of the guys is wearing Amon's mask from LOK. They are holding a silver tray and on it is a paper cup filled with this steaming yellow liquid.
They say that I must drink it... no reason why really... I just have to drink it or bad things will happen. I reluctantly pick up the cup, and hold it to my mouth. I can smell the fumes. The liquid has a nutty, oily aroma. (Oooh, I smelled something in a dream, that's a first.) I then cautiously take a sip and instantly feel very sleepy and pass out on the floor.
...
What followed were a couple of vague flashes of me trying to leave the college.
...
When I came to, I was driving my family's old van up to my house. I had the worst taste in my mouth and I knew it was from the yellow oil stuff I had drank earlier. I parked the van in the driveway and got out.
A police officer pulled up. He was a tall, muscular man with short black hair and a full beard/mustache, probably in his 30's. He told me in a kind voice that he wanted to talk to me about my driving skills.
I asked him if he could give me one moment. My voice was muffled and I felt like I was gagged. I felt my cheeks and I was, with my bandanna. It was tied very tightly around my head. After a minute or so of finagling with the knot, I was able to get it off, and then spit out some of that nasty oil that I had drank earlier. I felt very sleepy and unfocused. I wasn't drunk, but defiantly under the influence of something.
The officer said he wasn't going to write me a ticket, but what he had in store for me was much worse: a lecture on safety and driving. He started lecturing me about driving when I drink these substances, but I had some intense motivation for driving the van home in this half awake state and I was fighting to explain it to him. But I couldn't recall what the motivation was.
...
This somehow blended into a dream scene where I was home. I think this was the next day. The police officer had come in to have breakfast with us. I had been grounded from driving by my parents. In the dream, it was Friday, and I realized that I needed to get to my drawing class, but I couldn't drive myself.
For some reason it was my mom's friend who was supposed to be driving. She was having breakfast with us too. (We were all sitting in the kitchen and my mom was making waffles.)
I was a bit anxious to go, and the clock read something like 11:93. I thought that meant that it was broken and it was really 12:33.
So great... I've already missed half my class.
And, almost as if it were put in the dream just to annoy me, my mom's friend is eating the waffles in super slow motion. Eventually I just figured 'forget it' I'm going to miss my drawing studio class anyways, and just went up to my room.

I think this was a completely separate dream. This one was pretty vivid. I was visiting some beach area with Manei. We have parked far away and have to hike through the woods to get there. Supposedly we are investigating alien activity and other planets.
Okay, that is like every major dream sign that I have in the first paragraph. I guess I was semi lucid though, so we're getting back on track... slowly.
We hiked through the woods until eventually we came to this sand dune. We climbed up it and all of the sudden we were out in the open.
I recall this scene very vividly. There was a huge, broad, sandy valley with a river running through it running into the sea out in front of us. To the left are some mountains. Down in the sandy valley, just to the right of the river is a massive grey alien head (looking to be about 40-50 feet across), face up, eyes open in the sand.
Manei gets all excited because this shows a connection to what is on Mars. She get out this futuristic Ipad device with a clear screen and shows me a picture, from pretty much the exact angle we are looking at. The topography looks very similar, though it is on the polar ice cap of mars. The valley looks the same and the alien head is in the same position and some orientation.
I think that the alien heads were like telepathic nodes or something, but I can't remember...

Spoiler for Marcus:

And completely out of the blue, here is a drawing I did of one of my persistent DCs, Marcus. (I am by no means an art god, but I think this came out pretty good. My roommate thinks he looks like Walter White. I think he looks more like a combination of Steve Jobs and the guy from Vsauce. But that's basically his character,so, yeah.)

Sorry, I couldn't get it to not be tiny. I'll try and fix that later.

Non-lucid, False Awakening, Semi-lucid and Additional notes

Went to take a nap, and I fell asleep while playing some Sudoku, the hard level with diagonals...

.../I'm in the corner of our building. There's a garage door turning to the left side of the corner. Apparently it's part of our apartment. I take two low tom drums and sit next to the playground. I start playing some rhythms that I consider to sound like a war call. I like how it sounds and want to record this one. I see one of the patches is broken. There are a couple of punk kids walking around the neighborhood. I decide to go back into the house taking the two drums with me. Apparently the dream has ended and now I'm still laying on my bed 'thinking'. My 'thoughts' start to appear in front of my eyes, I don't consider this to be a lucid state, I just know that I'm not awake. Then I remember that I have the fractal dare in my things to do list. While I'm waiting for the dream to properly 'materialize'. I look for an image of a fractal where I could start this task. The whole floor turns into a cut shell structure like this:



I'm standing on the lines and notice it's diffracting in small portions of the same pattern to the borders like the borders of a crocheted doily.



I go there thinking that in order to perform the task, I must dive into those small structures. I think I have to zoom into those structures in order to do so. I knee on the web of lines and stare deeper into the structure. It doesn't take too much until I'm inside a huge 3D fractal structure of the same pattern. I think this is going to be awesome when I'm fully lucid. I turn on my back thinking that it's the best image I could come up with. When a thought (those very imaginative thoughts that only show up when I'm dreaming) gets into my mind: "What about if I cheat it? I mean, I could jump into foam bubbles and wallow on it! That's a fractal too". Then I remember it should be a romanesco and the task would be awesome too, like this one shell like pattern I'm wallowing on right now. I wallow extremely happy on this structure. Then I turn and fall to my side and end laying upside down against the mattress which is leaning against the wall. It's very uncomfortable here. I think I could RC to confirm if I'm not already dreaming when some hands pull my feet to the other side of the mattress. It's my wife and she seems to be very horny. She kisses me but her tongue tastes a little bit disgusting and I don't like it's texture, but damn, It has been so long (?) since she doesn't do something like this. I go on with the play trying to drive her passion in the right way/...

* Woke up to realize my little mistake...

Hi DreamViews people! I think it's finally all coming together now! The lack of recall, the lack of lucids, all-day tiredness, random dozing off...I've self-diagnosed myself with narcolepsy. I've done some online studying and all signs are pointing towards that. Basically what narcolepsy does is it starts the REM cycle at the start of sleep rather than in the later hours of the night. This is definitely a huge factor in my lack of recall and lucids, and so I finally understand why I haven't been very successful. All that aside however, I had my third lucid this month last night. Seems like a little extra effort is doing wonders. I don't recall much other than walking around and doing the backwards falling method to make the dream clearer. It worked, but I don't recall too much from the dream.

First thing's first: Yay! Two lucids within a week of each other!

So I dreamt I was wandering around an urban area by myself. I had just come from somewhere in some buidling(I forget what I was there for). I began walking towards the road, when I spotted my friend. She waved at me and smiled as she walked towards a blue car waiting for her. She got into the nice-looking car and shut the door. I then randomly became lucid, and I felt like doing something with her. I approached the car as it began to drive away very slowly, and I grabbed onto the spoiler of the car. I pulled back, and the car came to a stop and slid to the right. The girl got out, and we walked together for a bit, but my intentions with her were thrawrted as I awoke.

1. Dreamed about lucid dreaming methods/techniques. Had a fight with my sister in the living room, she tried to unplug my charging phone/laptop and use the charger herself, started saying ugly things to me. Johnson and Breckenridge twins (twins of families we know) were over. Breckenridges in Holly's room and Johnsons in Charlie's. (Holly and Charlie are my siblings) Holly feeding them breakfast, and at some other point giving one of the Breckenridge twins a baked/mashed potato. Went to check if they were gone or still there - gone. These are fragments - remembered more fully/more plot but fell asleep before writing anything down.

2. Could be chained to/continuation or morph of dream 1, unsure. Vaguely familiar of/similar to the plot of my next NaNo (random side note- NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month where you write a novel in a month in November, awesome stuff. 100k word 400 page novels, but the NaNo goal is 50k words. end random side note) novel, but also quite different. Was with someone (my dad? someone else?) either looking for something or investigating. I was being framed for something? The middle is vague/foggy, it changed into something else, different but similar, saw Amanda and later on Kara (people from grade school), there was some evil person trying to control us. I fell backward in my chair that I was tied to, needed help getting back up. Was scared and depressed. At one point she asked what our favorite Christian/worship songs were, and someone started with You Lift Me Up.

Had my first lucid in a long time two nights ago. I don't recall very much, other than it was night time outside when I became lucid. I then flew around for a bit, and I decided to change the time of day. I used the "force" if you will, to pull the sun into view, and it became day. The weird part was that when I turned around it was still nighttime behind me, but it was day on the other side. That's all I remember.

Hypnagogic imagery and phrases fascinate me. They are even less structured and substantial than dreams. Even when paying close attention, I find almost impossible to preserve them in memory unless I rouse myself to write them down immediately on my notepad. One recent example resembled a conversation between Fry and Leela from the cartoon Futurama (this was WLR as I had seen an episode earlier that day on TV).

Fry, in response to something Leela has just said: "I'll get some more jellybeans, then." He sinks out of sight, as though vanishing into the ground. A moment later he reappears in a space that resembles a dark cavern, and cries out: "You! The stomach god!"

.../Once again I'm in my grandparents house, it's dusk and there's a strong electric storm out there. I'm on my room, looking to the front side of the house when a lightning hits the hanging cables of the power supply of the city. There's a lot of sparks and a roaring noise until everything goes dark. The following scene, reminds me a WL night, when I was learning to use a semi-automatic photographic camera taking pictures of candles in front of an arrangement of mirrors. It was midnight under a clean full moon sky, when the energy supply of the city was cut for a few minutes. There's an old stadium in front of the house which looked amazing under the moonlight. For some reason, I go downstairs and find my old bike which looked something like this one here:

although it was another brand name. This time I find a dynamo to put in the wheel. I'm happy with this finding because it's something I was wishing for long time ago. I try to see if it works, when I decide to go out. I see my old comrade

is coming with me to take over the streets! He runs next to me, although sometimes I let him behind because of he finds something interesting to smell before turning back to run again. It's a known uphill wide street from my old days that I have to pedal standing on the pedals. I see him getting to nose into a passage when it automatically triggers my lucidity, I don't need to confirm because everything seems clear to me. I'm back in the days! I feel amazed how real I can feel my bike once again, and see my buddy boy once again running free on the streets. I want to do some tricks with my bike. I just get to run on a wall for a while. Not bad, but I don't remember any other I use to do when I dream here. Then I remember about there's the TotM, but anything else comes to my mind. I'm too focused on the bike to think about it. I turn to wait my pal. I got to jump with the bike high enough to turn it in the air. If it could talk it'd say something like: asd&ti§o3/?*83hihfj$ I'm laughing of my sketched move when I see my buddy running again, then I turn again still trying to unsuccessfully remember some task to do. I feel my legs are starting to get tired. I sit pedaling for a while, but I don't find it funny to ride my bike that way. I stand up again, when I see my dog running somewhere else. I decide it's time to leave him go. I turn in the opposite direction to get into a cross section. I have to brake some before getting into the traffic and realize I'm going towards the cemetery of the city. That's it, now I remember. I put some flowers on the graves, now I have to change the color of the flowers, of course, that's the task of the month!! () I'm getting closer to the main gate when the dream starts fading away/...

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.../I'm squatting to let the little devil go to play with her friends. She doesn't want to let me go and tuns back to hug me. It makes me fall on my back. I stand up, and start talking with one of her teachers. We have a conversation about Lego bricks. She tells me she used to play with her dad building a castle and a bridge that used to fall. I tell her that my brother and I, used to build a brick with plastic soldiers standing there, and threw batteries against it until it was completely "devastated". I remember I was around 8 when we did that, and I tell her it was like saying goodbye to that era. Because of it was one of the last times I remember playing with my old brother that way. She tells me that's exactly what the Gipsy Kings sing in one of their songs, they say: "My son didn't want to hear me, that's why I burned him"/...

* Alarm clock went off long ago and I realize it's late again, I have to run... again.