side notes

00:00 Monday 2013-11-25
00:00 ?? bedtime
04:49
1) helping a little girl to play the piano. fingers 1-2-4 of the right hand. She's playing with a single flat finger, I'm trying to get her to use proper hand position and to keep her entire hand in position and to hit the notes using fingers 1, 2, 4. Her mother is hovering over her to the left. I'm trying to get the girl to answer a question: "So, pieces usually go by....?" (I'm trying to get her to say "fast"), "so if you want to play well, you can't play with a single flat finger, you have to put your hands in the proper place, so that you know where your fingers are" Her mother is bending over more, I say "Look Out!", the mother knocks over a glass of orange juice with her hair/head and it spills all over everything.
2) Outside dark night scene, going in to a bar from a street corner/intersection, some black guys are trying to pick a fight with us, we manage to dodge them and get inside, once inside we think what are we going to do in here, more anad more gang members are meeting up outside, I think we could make a run for it, but there's a guy standing guard so we're not going to be able to get out.
F1) cleaning up a mess after some kind of event, tall tables, a group of young people.
F2) going through a bunch of letters, showing them to MR's sister, he doesn't want her to see them, I'm holding through this pile of letters and shuffling through them. His sister is very interested in them she's looking for an important letter, like a response to her loan application.
F3) Baseball game
Got back to sleep! Hurray! Wasn't fast, but wasn't hours long, 20-40 minutes perhaps? Focused just on relaxing, holding wife, imagining I was breathing "lucid dream gas" that will put me to sleep and lucid dream in just a few seconds.
07:19
3) indoor shooting range, very small like a convenience store, 4 young boys are grouped at a single non-divided counter shooting guns at targets, one boy is standing back from the counter and I'm concerned he's going to hit the boy to his right who is standing up at the counter. I shoot a small revolver outside, at nothing in particular, about 6 shots, then I open the cylinder so the spent cartridges can fall out to the ground and I notice that they are made with a strange spring-loaded re-usable mechanism, a base and a "hat" attached to the base with a spring. I imagine you can use a recording of a gun firing to trick a criminal in to thinking you're out of bullets, then you can save the girl.
08:58
4) on a road trip, there are guys in the car, I say through the window I'm going to go get some ice cream. In the gelato shop, different extremely colorful very strange flavors, about 8. One has very bright purple in it and is a mixture of grape with something else. One is "liquid filled peanut butter cups." The serving guy gives me a "taste" that is a huge portion, more than a regular portion, and it quickly falls out of the cup all over my (right) hand.
5) in a small home drama show, in someone's living room, the room is filled with people following the actors around, there are a lot of lesbians there. I'm sitting on a couch watching. I recognize one of them sitting next to me, a colleague of my sister's, I slap her leg with my hand and say "What have you seen?" I know that her partner has been in town for a while, but she was new to town. One of the female performers starts laughing while reciting her lines while walking/running through the room to the right, I think that's unprofessional.
6) outdoors in a park at an asian/chinese food snack stand, I ask about the ones with the water chestnuts. The cook is going on and on about the different thickness of the skewers: Very thick and tapering like a carrot, or very narrow like a toothpick, the thickness of the skewer determines how much meat to put on. He asks "Have you ever been to Peking?" They have great snacks there.
7) watching a drama theater presentation in R, but the language they're speaking is English. My wife is translating for me which is ridiculous because the show is in English. We had earlier met some annoying gay guys outside on the steps and now we're sitting right next to them, one is immediately to my left and one other is behind us. My wife is continually whispering "translations" for me I say "what are you doing? Be quiet! I already understand" The guys are saying "shush!" I tell them I'm sorry about the noise. I'm surprised that the program was presented in English.
8) In an office-space, cubicles. We're trying to arrange my work place with office helpers, trying to get my monitors arranged for my computer. There's a young woman whom I share a cubicle with, she has a (in my mind) really stupid idea of combining the monitors and computers so that they're all squished tightly together, I think it wil be very uncomfortable sitting side-by-side with her in that small space. The bookshelves are very high to the side mounted way up on the cube walls. The arrangement is my two monitors turned long side up vertically arranged next to each other, then a stack of cubbies holding cables on the side, and I decide "ok I guess that will work." But then I don't like the cube is wide open to the hallway behind us, I don't want to move to this new position, where people can walk by and see what's on my screen.
10:43
9) Watching a TV news program, I'm sitting down in an armchair to my left, the TV is to my right, the ancorman introduces himself, then the camera switches to the anchorwoman who says "Thank You." and starts in on the story. MEO. A guy is being interviewed. The guy is wearing a multicolored (blue and red)? thick striped sweater. They're talking about a problem in houses, something about ice in the water lines, they're making fun of the story, they don't believe it, they say sarcastically "Yeah, because we know how long ice can last in hot water pipes!" The camera view drops down to the man's chest, can't see his face any more, and the guy has man-boobs visible through his sweater, I think this is very bizarre.
F4) teaching children how to do backbends on a gymnastics balance beam. A little girl is bending all the way over backwards, she's supposed to get her hands behind her, the teachers are on each side of her helping.
F5) sitting in a chair, there's a very attractive young lady sitting next to me, a little in front, in a slinky black dress, we make eye contact but I don't pursue it. Short blonde hair. I think I'd really like to get with her!

00:00 Wednesday 2013-11-27
00:20 bedtime
00:35 still up, getting relaxed.
04:45 (garbled, only tiny fragment recalled in any case)
Long time getting to sleep, argment over snoring, probably didn't get to sleep until 07:00
07:45
1) Playing an old 1980's Control Data Corporation mainframe newtorked interactive multi-user space game called "Empire" (a real thing BTW). My view is filled with the screen showing my and the other ships flying around. I am very quickly pressing the key sequence that launches torpedoes and detonates enemy torpedos. I have a few dogfights with enemy ships. I think my O ship (smallest/weakest one in the game but fastest) has faster torpedoes than the other teams'. I make a kill against another ship. I am dodging enemy ships and fire frantically, constantly changing course. I then set course for a planet where I can fuel. I imagine approaching a huge space station (not in the game view any more).
Inside the space station, the aftermath of a Jedi battle, I'm a jedi and we've taken over the world. A female jedi partner and I are meeting with the former rulers of a world we hve conquered. We're then in a hallway approaching a door where we will make a broadcast presentation to the world telling about our new rulership of this world. "Great time to not have any pants on" I think, noticing I have no pants. I try pulling down a short robe which I'm wearing, it seems to stretch down to the floor. I imagine walking down the corridor with the bottom of the robe wiping along the floor. There are some colorful patterns on the bottom of the robe. My female partner says I should just tuck in the robe to my (underwear?). She says "everyone in the world is watching this (presentation) except The Force." One of the former, vanquished rulers is approaching, I'm sitting down, I think he may try treachery and try to kill me in my bad position with a lightsaber as he walks past me, I imagine him trying a fast attack and I respond by blocking with my lightsaber. I don't like that guy.
There is a presentation of an orchestrated fight sequence given by young children, about 3-4 of them diving and dodging and rolling around on mats.
09:37
2) watching a merry-go-round, there are some women there I'm watching.
stuck between a wooden fence and a building. The fence is like a ranch fence with side wooden boards and lots of space in between the boards. I can't get out, I don't fit somehow. Some woman says "don't worry just don't drink or eat and you'll get through." 3 women from the merry-go-round walk by.
10:56
3) on the beach of a beautiful very bright turquoise blue ocean. Someone says "oh there's whales!" I hear whale-sound in the air, I want to hear it in the water so I lean down over a sandy bank and put my head into the water to listen. I see the flat side of the sandy land above my head. Someone (my cousin G) says "what are you doing, you can't swim there!" But I love it and I would love to swim there, I don't care. They become killer whales, a parent and child. In some large ship with many levels. The small killer whale is a monster with a face full of teeth, dark (purple?) colored. It's following and trying to get me. I'm trying to take a picture of the whales, I have an old-style flat, wide, and long instamatic camera.
4) laying a table outside in some sort of garden for dinner. Inside there's a gathering. One narrator is a mostly naked, large white blonde-haired woman with extremely pale skin and super bright blue veins, turquoise, dark-blue-purple, all over her skin. I find it really nasty.
There is a pit set into the floor of the room under a grating, with buckets at the bottom. They need to be emptied and cleaned. I need to pull them up, it's hard because it's about 10 feet deep I don't know how I'm going to get them up. Emptying and cleaning the buckets.
F1) Caressing the arms and legs of some woman.
5) There's a woman lying in bed with textured stockings on. I start peeling the stockings off (ripping them off in strips). She's in bed with her husband/boyfriend, she likes what I'm doing, but he wakes up and starts smacking me around, I protest and say that I'm just trying to fix a tear in the stockings.

2 nights ago i dreamed something like i was in my neighborhood alone and scared of something..Keep running (small distance) untill getting home. I remember that i knew why I was running. Something chased me, it was like a demon.I runned 'till my home and then just runned all home from him because i didn't knew how to contra-atack him. After this it all was cleared, i was like in a white room,all white when like ...my inner-side appeared and told me how to defeat the demon but it was not like a fizical atack, it was more like mentaly. Anyway i was not scared anymore and after i woke up. Sorry for so less details , i couldn't quite remember all things. What does this means?

22:29 1/2 cup cold sleep tea (Mother's Wort + rose hips)

00:00 Friday 2013-11-22

00:30 ?? bedtime.

02:24

1) With DD, we had been fighting, we made up at the concert/graduation, it was a big thing that we were friendly & together again, we were being filmed. I saw my face DO and DD's face, my face wasn't my own, it was a generic young blonde face, with a dark spot under the right eye.

2) Filling out paperwork trying to get the deposit returned on a set of skis, the guys asks about (some kind of) skiing, I answer "that's the kind of skiing where you go off the trails." He says "ah, nah, forget that, I just want to go on the main streets." I say "Yeah, I know, you can go one street to another street, and you can just say, 'Ah, F*ck this, gimme a beer.'" I'm filling out the form, I draw a strange W-like character (sort of like a greek omega) but with 3-4 loops instead of 2.

06:20

F1) Young S1 and S2 are wearing University color shirts and waving flags as the train arrives.

F2) A man hosting a show about lucid dreaming, "Be Who You Want To Be!"

Crappy recall, I think that tea kills REM or something. Or maybe I'm just tired? Can't get back to sleep. AGAIN. SH!T. The night started out good with two dreams at about 2 hours, but then couldn't recall.

09:30 BTB nap

10:48 LD #8 DILD !!!!!!!!!!!!

Long time getting to sleep, did incubation scene injection (not holding hard on to visualization) of TG and JQ, and sometimes the scene started changing, like a new DC entered from off-stage, or I noticed something else in the scene suddenly that I didn't put there myself. Happened several times. Turned from back to left side. LD happened on left side. Told myself "The next thing I see is a dream" several times. Told SC "OK time to get that next LD to move along the November goals!"

3) I'm on my parent's deck it's twilight there's a beautiful view out over the city and the water, I immediately realize I'm dreaming! I get the lucid rush/feeling. I think "All RIGHT! Lucid right at the start!" I feel very aware, and I anticipate a long and awesome LD. But then vision goes black! I still feel lucid. I try prying open my dream eyes with my dream fingers, and I "feel" the dream eyes open but everything is still black. I try to imagine taking off and flying towards the water. Slowly fades to feeling my body in bed and I'm awake. Try to DEILD back in but too awake. Need to prepare strategy for the void (if that's what it was). Start rubbing hands RIGHT AWAY at lucidity!

November goals progress: 3 LDs / goal of 8. Still have a week, let's GO!

No more of that sleep tea, I get crappy recall after drinking it before bed.

00:00 Thursday 2013-11-21

00:39 bedtime

05:39

1) J. Tyn's vacation: cliff diving at the fish rock. He had the most wonderful time of his life there. We dove into the beautiful blue water. It was a cove with a tall rock (20 feet or more) in the middle. They spent the whole day diving from that rock again and again. From the water I climb up on to the top of the rock. It's kind of curved in cross section looking down from the top. I was pushed up from behind by the ocean on to the top of the rock. The magical thing about this rock is that the ocean washes over the top of it, there is a little shelf below the top where when the water recedes, food is left on that shelf. All kinds of fish. Boxes of pizza. You don't have to pay for any food, you just eat from what the ocean brings you.

2) I'm a new recruit in the army. Wake up in a room knowing I need to find where breakfast is and present myself for the lineup in time. But I don't remember know where anything is. I wil have to ask my fellow recruits. Get up into bathroom other people are around some men some women. I get a toothbrush and start brushing my teeth. The mixture of the toothpaste with some other thing falls from my toothbrush to the counter and it becomes alive and starts crawling like a snail down the cabinet and over the floor. I'm amazed by this. Other people notice and comment on it.

F1) something about wine.

11:43

F2) Have to meet with F. Jn. so he can go for a walk with a woman, we're going to meet by the tennis courts, S1 and S2 are going to go with me.

F3) On a steep hill, scooting up higher. I'm on an air matress. Beautiful lady to my right, she's getting ready to change/take off her top, I'm scooting higher to get into better position to observe . I see her breasts? They're's talking about some guy they're dating or had dating, one girl says "the couple of times we went out he showed up 15 minutes late."

F4) Young people are performing an advertising jingle inside, singing and dancing.

F5) In a place with people, upset that things aren't going the way I want. There's a huge refridgerator with transparent doors and revolving shelves inside. I see my microwave burrito, cold piece of pizza, and bottle of hot sauce inside. I grab all of these into my hands to go eat them.

F6) I'm laying a trap. My opopnent is like me, and can move at the speed of The Flash. I have a device with a button on it, I'm trying to hide it, I'm lying on the floor, I'm thinking should I hide it behind the door? Should I hide it over there? There's someone coming and I'm going to try to trap him by pushing this button when I see him.

Saw a dream forming? A sequence of images eventually solidifying? I woke up from it.
Oh that cursed 5th hour waking, the bane of my November! I stubbornly refuse to get out of bed or leave for the day without getting back to sleep for at least one more dream session, thus the big gap in times. Took a long time to get back to sleep, got back to bed around 9-9:15. Took a big swig of sleep tea (Mother's Wort and rose hips) around 09:00. Maybe that resulted in so many fragments instead of dreams.... may have felt it kick in to get to sleep.

00:00 Wednesday 2013-11-20

00:20 3mg tablet melatoninn

00:56 bedtime

03:52

1) playing a big tennis match, approaching court, I'll need sunscreen because it wil be hot. I was also checking my supply of water, the match may come down to to lasts longer in the hot conditions I think. Going down steps into the court area the courts are inside, the floor is red and rubbery. The courts are crowded along the fences they're full of people. The floor is covered in pingpong balls and lots of other stuff, the more I look the more I see, I'm trying to sweep away the ping pong balls and tennis balls and junk from the court. I see the corner from the court, brushing them off of the singles border up towards the net. One of the organizers (they're young boys) says "yes that's right, just sweep them away, there's some room down there you could put those balls down there on the other side. " I think this is stupid why should I have to do this. HEad back to the fence behind me, they say "we ran out of chairs because we ordered them from we forgot te tell them that this school had ramps" so they couldn't get the ordered chairs to the courts. No room for people to sit. View outside, why school with ramps, it's because it's a school for people in wheelchairs, I see young people in wheelchairs rolling towards the courts outside in the daytime. There are rolling hills outside with the paths and there are some pretty girls in wheelchairs rolling towards the courts. They're preening and making suggestive poses with their arms in order to attract boys at the tennis match.

A group of young people sitting down at a table drinking. One young man is deeply in love with one of the girls and said "I touched the lights" and laughing about it, but he was also sad. The girl just liked him as a friend.

A very drunk guy with a fat moony face. He was trying in vain to get directions from a subway cahier. It was like a scene from a candid camera comedy show. He kept asking questions and never got answers to the questions. He was there all night long trying to get the cashier to answer some question, any question, at the end he was asking about some sport from California and she answered "well I don't know anything about that."

07:02

2) touching moment, PT big hug, feel his scratch cheek against mine. Service for his parent's passing away? Down a ski path into the snow, find a buried bit with all of the T family's buried gold. I have to bring things back to them, there's a big truck to dig up the things in the pit. More detail forgotten.

F1) in a dorm room trying to choose the right bed. It's fun to be in a big room full of people, but then I realize that sleep is more important so it's better to be in a room by yourself.

10:03 haven't slept to this REM cycle in about a week or more, probably the melatonin helping

3) Old poignant memories. In my old house where children grew up. Petted my deceased dog L, I knew I could do this because it was a dream (not lucid!). He purred like a cat, and I "remembered" that he could do that. "In dreams you can even smell things" so I tried smelling him but I didn't sense anything. I walked away from him weeping and sobbing because I missed him so much. Looking through a hole in our fence in our yard blasted wide open. I was confused how that could have happened. "Realized" that it must have been the wind (In WL very windy a few days ago), I imagined going to the hardware store, buying wood planks, and sawing them to size and nailing them. I imagined stepping through the hole in the fence into the neighbor's yard and stepping on to a spider web. It was a long-deserted house.

I'm in bed with my wife. We're getting naked (I'm taking off my pants) and getting ready for sex but she didn't want to she said our son will hear us because he's coming home soon. She was lying naked on top of me. It was enjoyable. Instead of blankets we're lying under wood/lumber plank which were wet and black.

Saw my young (3-4 years old) children sitting at a table with red placemats. I thought they could do their homework at this table.

Upstairs, in another room, a strange destroyed piece of furniture. At first it appeared to be a glass topped dining table and the frame holding the glass seemed to be damanged. Looking closer at it there is a space underneath the glass and a wooden bottom. There are lots of things in there, like some mechanism, but it is damaged. I ask "what happened to the piano? How did it get like that". The table is a shell meant to hold the piano, which is a separate construct now visible just beyond the table.

In parent's house, S2 is sitting at the top of the stairs to the basement, with his back facing down the stairs, he could have fallen backwards, I say "A, don't sit like that because you could fall down the stairs bump-bump-bump-bump and fall off. You should always sit sideways." He turns sideways and places his hands in the crack between the door and the frame, I say "don't get your fingers pinched in the door."

Children are being really cute. I felt like I missed them being that age. They were running around lightly bumping their heads into things and saying "bimp! bump!" They're doing it on purpose. S2 was stretching and moving in the way of a baby. My wife starts to say "you can really learn a lot from..." and I thought she was going to say "the way a child moves" but she didn't say that.

I wanted to see S2, he said something really cute (forgot it), I say, "A, come here!", he says "Daddy, why are you sad?" I say "I'm not sad!"

Neck hurt all night long. Probably because I slept on stomach previous morning with head at bad angle on pillow.
3 wakings with pretty good recall each time.

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I’ll start in the middle, since I don’t quite know where this story began. Aislinge is not merely my name; it is the word I have chosen to describe what I am. A Gaelic word for “of dream”, though the root word aisling is also used as a female name -that is me, the girl of dreams. That is to say, I was not born female; I’ve had to learn how to conjure the experience through the magic of mind. There were other options, though I am not interested in merely changing my mortal body, instead I am working on a solution much greater. My mortal body will eventually grow old and die, but a fully realized being of the dream world can free themselves of this suffering. That is why I wish to begin a second life in that world and permanently become a part of the inner realities. Many would tell me this is impossible with current science, and they may be right, though I’ve decided long ago that if no one is going to give me the freedom then I will have to make it on my own. Even if it means evolving beyond the constraints of a human body and rewriting the apparent laws of physics, it is my dream, and I’m going to make it happen.

I lean back against the cold metal door of my house, lost in thought. My digital typewriter sits on my lap, the screen glowing ghostly green, eerily complimenting the bright light of a full moon. While wind on the lake roars in the distance, chills slither down my spine from the crisp air of winters eve. I pause to light my last cigarette, and have a sip of an ice cold cup of coffee. Their bitter earthy flavours shock my mind awake from that moment of surreal bliss. Soaking in the night with a deep breath of the serene country air, I drop the barely smoked butt in a makeshift flowerpot ashtray, and head inside to the guest room of the quiet old house. After silently opening the door, I step inside and slide my shoes off. Our large tomcat curiously watches the open door as I close it, looking for a way out, then trots off defiantly in a flash of black and white to his food dish like a spoiled teenager. I begin to tip-toe through the foreboding hallway towards my temporary bedroom, and pull the handle wincing as the hinges creak like a shrieking banshee. I shrug it off then stroll in to softly lay down on the royal blue futon and continue writing.

I have acquired some unique skills on my quest; one such ability allows me to dream while awake. I often use it to create hallucinations at will, either to simulate fantasies, or project my mind into the environment like a living ghost. I taught myself this so I would be able to emulate this female body into my perception, and it has worked exceptionally well. Although as of yet anyone watching will usually only see me go into a trance like state while I am focused on the fantasy. I wish to make myself perceivable, though so far I have only managed to learn how to describe the experience through language or illustration. That’s the main reason for writing this journal, so I can record these things in detail for further study.

It is getting late, though before I leave to go home for the night I’ll give an example of this phenomenon of mine. I’m still on the bed, lying in the dark room, with only the soft glowing display of the typewriter and the dim celestial bodies shimmering through the window. I close my eyes and feel my body changing shape. My jeans are growing loose as I shrink, tickling my smooth tender skin. While my hands become slender and slight I have to reach further to find the right keys. My shirt is now tighter around my gently curving breasts, and my underwear much more empty. I open my Inner eyes and see myself transformed, feeling my heartbeat rush and my cheeks blush. While lifting myself up to the edge of the bed, I notice the fabric weave of the futon vividly pushing into my soft palm. When I stand up my pants fall down, the boxers only held up by an elastic waistband. I walk to the door in floppy socks, and my hands are nearly covered by the long sleeves of my shirt. I open the door reaching a bit higher than usual, and head to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror.

The reflection shows me with long flowing black hair, ghostly pale skin, and bright green eyes. My chin is rounder, and lips fuller, grinning beneath a slightly crooked nose. Above my socks, my slender legs blend into wide hips, and although my shirt billows around my torso it curves over the top of my breasts. With slimmer shoulders the shirt puffs loosely to the sides, and my thinner neck allows the collar to rest lopsided. I begin to prepare myself for bed; polishing my pearly white teeth and washing my cute face, then return to my room exited for the journey home. I walk in through the open door and climb onto the bed, sitting cross-legged in front of the keyboard to catch up where I left off.

The home I refer to is the world I enter in sleep, as that is where I am in my element. The world outside my thoughts is not yet ready for me to fully exist, so I have learned how to live in my mind. After all, it is in the womb of dreams where fantasies come alive and so it is there I will nurture mine until I can be reborn as an Aislinge.

I will continue using this journal for detailing my nightly practice in dream magic, with the main goal being my feminine alter ego. My study will take the form of incubating a vivid dream life by fantasizing regularly before falling asleep. This is to focus my mind on the goal, and trigger dreams with related subject matter. When I wake I will record the nights experiences here, and the more I do my mind will get better at remembering other life.

The next step I am taking in this journey is to develop the skill of lucidity, which is the ability to realize the differences between the inner and outer world, and so know which I am in at a given time. To do this I will study the records of my alternative life and look for things that signify I am in the other world. When I realize that I am in a dream, and my physical body is asleep, I will use my abilities to take my true form. For in that world I can explore my fantasies freely, practicing the technique to perfection to prepare to take it further.

I fall back onto my pillow and stretch out my legs, then pull the down blanket over me. Sliding my hands beneath the cushion under my head I start to fantasize about the adventures the night may have waiting for me. I wonder if I have been already living this life in my dreams, and have been calling to myself to remember. In many of my occasional lucid dreams, I remember meeting my alter ego as though we are two souls in a single body. In fact she was the one who taught me how to dream while awake, appearing as a hallucination and beckoning me to join her. Perhaps she is my subconscious I reason, living in the world of my mind all this time, and coming forth to guide me into her world...

23:43 bedtime

23:47 ate WAY too much too late for dinner, arg, stupid! Getting up to do some reading.

00:00 Sunday 2013-11-17

02:45
F1) In a group of people their attention is focused on something, something was trying to get in between them from the steps above.

I get wild/wacky/random dreams a lot but this one takes the cake I think:

1) In a huge open field late at night, I'm standing under a tower, I'm concerned that if I climb it I'll be hit by lightning, I start climbing up its stairway, I get blown off the stairs by wind, I'm barely hanging on by one hand to the railing over the edge, I imagine if I fall someone will come across my dead body. I get back up and climb to the top, I step on a certain place and the entire tower collapses and falls to the ground, I'm falling with the tower, I'm trying to find temporary footholds to lessen my fall on the parts of the structure that are still together, there's a brief vision (1/2 a second) of Dwight Schrute from the Office's face looking up at me from below with a scared expression, shouting "NOOO!"
When I reach the ground I start running for my house. Still on giant wide open farmland. I have to reach my home before something reaches me. A voice says the mushroom bloodhounds are going to come from miles around. They're drawn to whatever happened. I'm running, I have a set of keys in my hand, there's a number written there, ("9988?"), I look around, during flashes of lightning I see that the entire horizon is filled with little creatures running towards me. The creatures are at my ankles, I reach a door with a number matching the key, I rush inside, some of these creatures (like cabbage-sized mushrooms with big bulging Mr. Potatohead huge bulging white eyes with big black pupils, the creatures are are squishy and juicy) are coming in through the door I try to pull the door closed, and get in through another door (the first door was to an internal porch).

There's a woman there who's coming to visit, she's the one bringing all these creatures. I tell her I don't want these things, she says they're a gift, I say I don't want them get them out of here (I don't like their juiciness), she says ok she's taking them back. I look at her and she's absolutely beautiful young woman, shining and beaming and smiling at me. Very bummed to have missed lucidity that moment, she was a right proper "dream girl."

2) in a group outside, a restaurant there's a big surprise coming. (famous actor?) coming up from behind he comes up behind the guy at the head fo the table and squeezes his shoulders, it's a big shock. There's a procession (DO), there's one very odd character / thing which has empty eye sockets the eyes are bobbing around outside of the face fo the thing, which is some kind of construct, built from wires/sticks. Its attention is moving around, kind of spooky.

F2) Getting in to some kind of office, a woman says: "Will it be Asian, or Asian delight?"

05:34 FA #1 LD #7!!!!!
3) Wake up in my old bedroom in my parent's house, I'm in bed with my wife. Something's not right here, something about the sound (in WL there's a fan on in the room), I suspect a LD, nose pinch, I can breathe, YES, I am dreaming, this is a FA! I see a few things from my childhood room, it's dark, a Snoopy spelling trophy, went out into the hallway (always lit), down the stairs, as I pass the front door I think I should perhaps go outside and change to daytime. Instead I go into the living room, it's dark, just can barely see the outlines of the room, there is no furniture there! Did another nose pinch, I can breathe, my nose feels flimsy, like it's not even connected to my breathing apparatus. "OK," I think, "time to get down to business." I say "BE LIGHT!" to lighten the room. A weak light hovers around my face. I will it to be more light, and the room becomes about half-lit. I think nough of this 'no female entaglements stuff,' so I summon my first highschool girlfriend, I say, "K.S., BE *THERE*!" and point at the couch (which appeared at some point). And she is there! I move on the couch with her, straddling her, now the couch has reoriented so that it's back faces the room, and I can see the stairs. I think to myself, "this is a solid lucid dream, and it is going to last a long time" (WL intent). I felt like I could stay in for a long time. I initiate sex, the feeling is more like ND sex, kind of flimsy and things don't quite fit. My wife comes down stairs, I pull KS down lengthwise across the couch, kind of squishing her against the back of the couch, trying to hide her under me, cover her with a blanket. Wife comes right up to the back of the couch and looks down at me, "what are you doing here?" I say, "sleeping..." she moves away, back to the bottom of the stairs, then she turns towards me, and annoyed, says "I don't have time for this! I have to do (all kinds of things...)" I get mad, and command her to go upstairs: "BE UP THERE!" and I point upstairs, and ZOOM she disappears becomes a brown blur zipping up the stairs, like the cartoon character The Flash. I start kissing KS, but her face is dark, I say, "K, why can't I see you?", then she is lit well again. I see her, study her face, it's not a perfect version of K.S. but she is *totally realistic*, the color and pattern of her shirt, her hair, her face, all very life like. We kiss a few more times. I feel the beginnings of a climax, I will it to happen now, and I fade to awake in bed with a fast heartbeat. Try to DEILD back in but too awake.

I think this was my longest LD to date, 3-4 minutes. Lucidity about the same as my other LDs, not very high, but succesful summon and environment control (half lit room), and DC control.

Having no earplugs in may have helped: I think I noticed the difference in sound between the fan in my room in WL and in the dream room.

11:02

4) battle with a guy on a bed it has grates with water in them, he's trying to lure me close to the grates to that his weapons will work, I'm trying to get him close to the grates and squirt water down into the grate because that will cause his weapons to explode onto him. Water grenades of some sort with different effects. There is an explosion.

5) in an internal room, with lots of little sub-rooms off to the side with poles in them, it's like a porn store, there are little cone shaped (like trumpet mutes) devices which you're supposed to roll around with on the ground especially in a special powder which will greatly enhance the pleasure. I see big sweaty black guys pumping away with prostitutes in these little side rooms, really going at it, I think I don't want to go into these rooms, there's sweat and other stuff all over the floor and they're disgusting.

F3) MR, childhood friend. Something about owing him money or getting money from him

F4) Finding a teacher so that my kids will learn how to get into medical shcool.

6) (earlier awakening). In a room below ground level in a house (I think my old house in CP). I open up a ground level window, it's painted white, there's a wooden set of bars/lattice on the window, in the lower left hand corner there's a white/pink sponge jammed into the lattice, at first I think this is a motion detector but then I think it's to prevent the rats from coming in. Look past the right side of the lattice at ground level in the backyard, there's a small wooden grating just past the window, in between this grating and the lattice hidden in some plants is a rat's nest with 3 or so rats jumping around, a mama and some babies.

At the other end of the house. Standing right outside a window, looking down to the ground, there is a fairly large and deep hole that goes under the house, there is a family of ground owls (I see them, about 3) that live there. I'm showing this to a bunch of Chinese people. A teenage girl shrieks in fear at something up in a tree, I'm annoyed because it's just a white flower. There's an attractive woman and an annoying guy, the guy says "let's go off (somewhere),", I say "yeah, let's do that!" and he goes off and we ditch him, I"m pleased with myself. I take her hand and lead her behind me to show her the rats nest I found earlier. Her hand is a bit sweaty. The nest has been cleaned up it's not there any more. We're back in the room where I saw the nest to begin with, there's a big party going on, lots of tables are set all throughout the different rooms, all the tables have glasses of champagne and wine on them. I ask if she'd like a drink, she says yes, so I sit her down at a table and go off to find 2 fresh glasses of champagne. I find one but can't find another where the glass hasn't been used (I see lipstick markings), I'm walking all around to find a glass, I eventually enter a large area where a caterer is working preparing food, I ask the caterer for a clean glass, they say "no there are no clean glasses left." I think about getting a bowl and pouring a drink into the bowl, but I think "nooo, she doesn't want to drink from a bowl." I think about pouring a drink from one glass to another one, fooling her. I don't make it back to her.

One of my worst sleep nights ever, probably was awake at least half the time from 00:00 to 11:00, but I don't care since I had a fun LD (first FA!), and lots of interesting NDs.

Okay, another ATLA-esque dream. This time I was a firebender, and rather than having some plot, I was simply going between my bedroom (more space) and my bathroom (wall mirror) practicing my powers.
After a few minutes, I figured out I could use electricity as well. After that, I got really obsessed with perfecting this one move. I can't remember what it was called, I think it was the "thunder kick", but what I would do was essentially do a kick while spinning 360 degrees around me, and the electricity would whip off my foot and hit all of the opponents around me.
I wasn't able to perfect the move, but I was able to make enough progress that I was satisfied with myself.

I had some dream about living in some city called "Green City". (Green City is the name of a fictional city from one of my comics.)
The city however had two really different architectural styles. One side of the city had red brick buildings that looked to be tall and square with small windows. They were almost like castles and fortresses. Some had smoke stacks and brick arches going over the streets.
The other side of the city had these sort of futuristic buildings with angled rooftops and glass facades. For most of the dream, I was more to the brick building side of the city, so I never really got a good look at this side save for seeing the towers off in the distance. I could tell that that was the wealthiest part of the city.
A few other notes about the city. (I remember alot of details.) For one, I was looking at the sun on the horizon, so I was either looking east or west. (It was west because as the dream carried on it got darker. West was also the direction of the futuristic district. The city was surrounded on all sides but the north by mountains covered in forest. The north side had sort of a bay.
Since the city's name was "Green City" and based off my comic, I was thinking about my comic, and in a way I was either mildly lucid or executing some sort of non-lucid dream control. I was thinking about this plot where a meteor hits the center of town. There was this big crater in one of the city blocks and bunch of buildings had been knocked over.
After a few minutes, I got bored of the plot idea, and realized that it didn't really fit in with my comics all too well. So I executed my nonlucid dream control and patched the crater in the center of town.
I walked about two blocks west, and on my left was this industrial compound. It looked like an oil refinery, but was very small. (Perhaps only about a hundred feet on edge.) The entire lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence, but a section had been bent over and I was able to walk in.
I started thinking I heard an animal, and began looking around. I climbed a metal ladder onto a catwalk about 15 feet above the ground. I was still following the animal sound when I opened a valve on a metal pipe , about a foot wide. A trapdoor on the side of the pipe opened and i reached inside.
I pulled out a cat. He/she was very skinny, and I could see its ribs through its fur. It had sort of tiger markings, with stripes and was brown and black. It had notches in its ears where it had been clawed, and was covered in grey dust that I assumed was ashes.
I somehow was immediately at home with the cat. When my mom saw the cat, she couldn't believe her eyes. She told me the cat's name was "Shipping Crate" (that's a stupid name) and was her own cat when she was a little girl. She went on to tell me that she had lost him/her in that same oil refinery 25 years ago. (I don't think cats can even live that long.)
I watched as Shipping Crate began to interact with the other cats in my house. (We have three cats.) He/She didn't seem interested in picking fights or anything. My mom went on saying she was going to get him/her some food.

Side notes: These dreams were only strange to me because of how my dreams have gotten so chaotic and non-vivid as of late, and these dreams seemed to be slightly more vivid and congruent that anything I've dreamt in months. The firebending dream was particularly vivid. I'm taking this as a sign that hopefully I will continue to get better, and hopefully I can begin to lucid again. (I almost had a lucid last night, there's a good sign.)

-------------------------
00:00 Saturday 2013-11-16

01:06 bit less than half of a 3mg tab of melatonin

01:24 bedtime (wife very noisy, tossing, turning, sighing, well past 02:00)

Could feel the melatonin kick in, adding a gentle push / deeper sense of wanting to sleep. Pleased with the experience will probably use again. Didn't get me immediately to sleep though because of wife noise.

07:09 earlier awakenings with recall but no will to record didn't want to bother wife.

1) in a house, my hosue, we're selling it, we're showing it, a black couple is looking at it, there is a price on a sign saying about $5,000,000. I wonder if they'll pay that much for this house. They don't say it's junky but they're not impressed, I say "it has lots of personality, the former owner changed a lot and didn't maybe didn't paint it outside for a long time but the construction was all excellent and pure quality construction. I look at the exterior walls and see some need paint badly. We're in a sort of barn-like covered but exposed to the outside area. I showed where a place had been cut with a saw line and had never been corrected (as an example of funky coolness), the lookers smile, there was alittle room outside, walked outside to garden. THey asked about the separate room, we had a separate room up on the street, I said it was fully zoned and permitted as an official extra room, it has its own hot water heater so you can take long hot showers (imagine being in a hot shower). It's up a long stairway up to the street. We're going up and there's an old woman they bump into her and say excuse me (current resident of room?)

In a room with wife going to bed, very large room with columns, she's going to bed I'm turning off lights, I'm at light switches on the other side of this large room I can't see the bed well from where I'm standing I'm flicking switches but they're not all turning off properly wife says no they're still on "it's getting too bright", she gets impatient and goes to another switch and turns them off and smirks "that's all you had to do". I say I can't see the bed from here. Go back to her at the bed. There's a dumbell on the floor, I start doing bicep curls, my arms are well-built and well-defined the biceps are bulging nicely as I do the bent-over curls. Right arm then left arm. Then S2 (current age) comes in. I say "show us your super duper biceps" dumbell is nautilus-shaped. Wife says you should take out your teeth. Son takes out fake teeth thing and it's covered with food and wife is trying to fit it into her mouth and I'm disgusted by this.

In a ChDw house, in the garden there were herbs and I wanted to have a house with a nice garden. There was a flower stand with a large fake blue bird.

In one room while walking through the house with the lookers there's a barn-like weight-room with weight sets made from
chains.

Thinking about email address of ChDw and my usual usernames at companies

2) weird exposition: Russian gala presentation like a giant float, 100 yards long and 40-50 yards wide and 40 yards tall, made up of many sections, each section very long but narrow and not very wide like a french fry. These sections are stacked about 5 high on top of each other. Each section has wire fence material on the sides and the floor. Huge things are popping up from the sections, colorful (animals?). There were children inside these sections, there were technical difficulties. Colored yellow on top? Boys in these sections talking to each other. Something is not working right. There were people coming up and handing flowers to the people inside, there was a little girl who got excited and started peeing a bit and she started crying a man comes and picks her up to comfort her.
At the beginning of the presentation there were rows of Russian girls with numbers on their backs like atheletes, I pull up these numbers over one of the girl's head.

3) at parent's house, with dad, like in the dining room, I go to give him a warm hug, he does a quick backslapping hug then gives a longer hug. Go through a door with him, like out on to the deck (but it was a room), I think a glass of wine would be nice, mother is in there (both are younger), they both start singing happy birthday, there are glasses of champagne in there, I'm happy.

07:09 MILD based off of house scene

08:42 can't get back to sleep, take 2nd (larger) half of 3mg melatonin, WBTB

10:49 voice recorder fail. don't think there were dreams? about 30-45 seconds.

12:52
4) getting my backpack, tent, orange inflatable ground pad, sleeping back from a bag / box stored in a room/closet, I'm really happy to get them, "yay!". My old baseball glove is in there. From CrLe? I put on the glove it's not my old glove, I look further and see my actual old glove. It's a bag from a sports club, there are raggedly half-chess boards nailed to the end of a platform, there are old rowboat oars. There's a strange (harp-like?) musical instrument with tons of long wire/strings, each wire has an individual tuning button and I start pressing them all to adjust all the strings, then I think I have to leave and ask someone to unpress all of these tuning buttons to return them to their original position. There's a weird version of my instrument and I realize the real version is in my parent's house so I have to go get it to give a demonstration.

Meeting with young folks to help me get my stuff but they're drug dealers so they're hurrying, they're European I say I speak Francais and Anglais (and something else) going down some steps then up to the circle, there's a car there I say let's get in car, they don't want to. The gray car starts peeling out and turning around, we have to get into the house before the car turns all the way around and the people inside can see us. We're diving for the stairs down the left side of the house on the ground, turn around as me make it to see if they see us, think we make it. There's a stoplight ahead of us. Concerned that if we stop here we'll be seen. Go through come around to other side of house think I have to get through the sliding glass door to get inside.

13:00 melatonin in the morning is probably a bad idea, I feel pretty groggy, but I was desperate to get back to sleep for more dreams later (I knew it would be several hours perhaps before REM). Didn't seeem to help much getting back to sleep even though I did feel its effects I think.

Much more time passes when I'm trying to get to sleep than what it feels like, probably 4-5x more than what it feels like. 1.5 hours feels like 20-30 minutes. It doesn't feel like I'm falling asleep and re-waking up but it's possible, as there are tiny moments of discontinuity which may be me falling asleep into non-REM sleep.

I almost forgot this dream. I had the impression I had dreamed about grotesque insects. I was tempted to not remember it. Somehow, something I saw while driving refreshed the memory.

I was in my spare room. It is mostly empty and looked like it does in real life. -Expect for two piles of dirty laundry in front of the closet door. They looked like piles of dirty oily rags. Something you would use on a car. Sitting plain as could be between the piles are two plastic cylinders filled with clear water. One was almost empty, the other was mostly full.

Escaping the mostly empty 'tank' was something like a giant albino pill bug mixed with a silverfish. Except slimey and fleshy. They scattered when I spotted them.

For some reason, I felt more worried about the inhabitant of the second cylinder tank...

I picked it up using both hands and held it up to get a close look. Floating up the surface was something very difficult to describe. It was elongated, lopsided snail-like thing fused with a clam. It had a tiny human-like face with dull black eyes. It was mostly snail brown with darker blurry stripes, and a slightly translucent shell. I had the impression two lived the tank. But only saw the one.

I recently started looking through HP Lovecraft writings. The monsters described in the lore are notoriously difficult to depict or comprehend.

I don't really recall my dreams from last night, which is sort of disappointing. I'm making an entry in order to keep up the habit of making an entry, and also in case I recall anything throughout the day (which happens).

Recalled a lot of frags last night.

I was at the grocery store with my mom. We were buying food for some event at my taekwondo studio. I recommended that we buy 20 packages of spaghetti. (A lot) But she said that would be too much. I had to remind her about the children class at the studio that has like 50 students.

I was outside the grocery store (same dream probably, but I can't remember how I got out here.) Still with my mom, and we were discussing how we were going to carry the groceries home. Apparently we didn't have a car. Another detail I recall was the sky was very weird, it looked like the sun was rising and setting at the same time.

I was actually at my taekwondo studio and the master was having us do this weird new thing with our kicks that was supposed to help us stretch out. When I started doing it, I was pretty bad, but I looked even worse because I was too far into the corner of the studio and didn't have requited room to move around.
After we were done doing 15 of the kicks (all of us) even though mine were pretty sloppy, he dismissed class and let us go.

I was in my math class. We were getting our tests back, and they were pass/fail. I looked at my test and (I kid you not) the number 99.99% was written on the top. Apparently I had dropped a negative sign somewhere on the test. I looked through it and found the circled problem. And when I looked at it, there WAS a negative sign next to the number, be it small and difficult to see.
A called my teacher to show her that she had graded it wrong, but she said that I had written the negative sign too high up, and she couldn't count it.
I started looking through my backpack for a pencil to change the answer. As I did, the classroom morphed into the backstage of a play setting, with people in costumes going on/off stage and people moving props and stuff. But I was still focused on finding a pencil. I never did find one but what I found was much more interesting.
I found a number of drawings, many of them of dream related things. One of them was of two of "me" one of them looked like me from real life. The other of myself when I see myself in dreams. Another was of Manei, my own dream guide sitting in a meditative position.
I actually became mildly lucid after seeing that drawing.
The third and final drawing that I remember seeing was of... I never told anyone about my recurring "Symbol" dream, but that will be discussed later.

Or maybe I'll completely forget to talk about the symbol dream.

And that brings me to the title of this entry. I have had really bad recall and haven't had a lucid dream in at-least two months. But last night I had recall for the second night in a row. It seems like good launchpad to start breaking down these mental barriers.
And that's because I think I finally figured out why lucid dreaming got so difficult. It's all in my head. It only got more difficult because I thought it was going to get more difficult, and It can get easier, too. I know how easy some of my lucid dreams came, and it's not a difficult concept to grasp. So I am starting a project called "breaking mental barriers" to try and reset myself to the mindset that lucid dreaming is easy. This next week, I'm going to act like a newbie lucid dreamer, and go back to the basics of DILD and the likes, with hopes that I can start lucid dreaming again.

As I went to sleep tonight, I recited a mantra, "I will stabilize". I also firmly fixed in my mind that as soon as I began dreaming, I would know that I was dreaming.

This worked. I spent some time drifting, and then a dream began. I was lying in bed, and the lights were on. I looked to my left. There were 3 tiny, glowing playing cards floating in the space above my head. I thought, "Yes, I'm dreaming," and snatched the playing cards from where they were floating. It's hard to explain, but the cards were a cue for me - it was specifically seeing the cards that made me lucid. I don't remember what suites the cards were, only that they were 1/4 the size of normal playing cards, they were glowing, and they immediately induced lucidity.

I got out of bed, and my bedroom was very different and not at all like my real bedroom. The carpet was worn out, and an ugly shade of tannish orangy brown. My "dream room" carpet is always this ugly color, for some reason. The door was in the wrong place, and led to a hallway that doesn't exist, and there was no furniture besides my bed. The bed was a twin, but in real life, I have a full. I said, "Stabilize!". I went to the door and tried to visualize that as soon as I went through it, I would be in a rainforest. I tried very hard to convince myself of this.

When I went through the door, everything was dark. I saw shadowy forms that hinted that I was in another room. I got frustrated and lost lucidity.

I woke up, grumbled, and tried WILD. I got past the initial wave and felt as if I was sinking into my bed. I sat up out of my body. I tried to open my eyes, but it was very hard, and I felt like I was opening my physical eyes. I was really tired and had work in the morning, so I gave up on it and lapsed back into unawareness. I dreamed that my head had made a huge dent in my pillow, so now my pillow had 2 lumps of stuffing on either side and nothing in the middle. I tossed and turned (in the dream) and tried to make it comfortable somehow.

I dreamed I was shopping at a store. I've never been there in my waking life. There was a desk on a top shelf that I was interested in - it was $50, and I thought it would make a good room divider. But my cell phone was malfunctioning badly. The screen came off (how?) and then it got hot to touch and melted. I got some of the melted screen on my finger, and it burned me. I kept thinking about how frustrated I was that all of my money now had to go toward buying a new phone. I needed a smartphone, too, so it was going to be expensive.

I woke up. I tried some visualizations. I visualized a room full of dolls, where each doll represented a DC I knew. I visualized putting a doll on the floor and making it grow to full size. (I was not asleep at this time). I began drifting off, but the visualization didn't completely take hold, and I didn't become lucid. Instead, the room became the room of a woman with a group of really odd friends. My dream followed their antics, but I don't recall any specifics on what they were.

Review:
Dream clues:
- Playing cards (instant lucidity)
- My pillow doesn't have stuffing. It's a memory foam pillow.
- Unfamiliar store, without recalling how I got there
- Malfunctioning phone (malfunctioning electronics)
- Spectator perspective

Edit: Believe it or not... I actually figured out the playing cards while I was riding the train home. In my dream, they were glowing like they were lit up LEDs. On the train ride home, there's an installation where LED playing cards flash by the train windows. I tend to stare out the window at them because I'm bored and they're something to look at... which means I'm also staring at my reflection. So, since mirrors instantly make me lucid (for some reason), apparently my brain linked the playing cards with my reflection strongly enough that just looking at a card makes me lucid.

Ah! So close so close so close... Slept 8.5 hours today, not surprising after last night's early waking, at first I thought I had no recall but then memories came in from the night from multiple scenes and did quick journal. Woke once or twice during the night but just too tired to journal.

Decided I still felt sleepy enough to try for a WILD again. Spent about an hour trying to sleep, with mantra going ("I'm dreaming" mostly) with visualization of desired scene. It was a fun scene so didn't really feel the time going by . Probably the wrong thing to do (visualizing the scene and playing with it)? Felt like I was trying to "make it happen" by holding the scene in my mind. At one point I did get some body hallucinations: like I was swinging. I could change the feeling from front/back swinging to side-to-side swinging like on a huge hammock. I know, I know, "don't fiddle with the noise, sonny." . I was on my back for all this, not my usual sleeping position.

Didn't feel like I was making progress, so I rolled over to side (usual sleeping position), and decided just to "let it happen" instead of trying to "make it happen," let go of visualisations, did my usual "go to sleep/dream" relaxing/releasing of mind/thoughts, but kept "I'm dreaming" mantra. And pretty soon my breathing became a bit shaky and laboured, my heart rate went up a bit, and my mind entered a feeling just like how lucidity feels in a DILD, yet I was totally aware as it occurred! Tried to stay relaxed and kept mantra going. Strong feeling of excitement/anticipation. But I didn't see anything except the back of my eyelids. I thought "where's the dream?" Feeling subsided a bit, and I found I could "push" back towards it a little.

Didn't make it in but that's the closest I've ever been....but jeez after an hour of visualization, no dream images waiting for me!?

Anyway, "Let it happen" seems to be the key, which is I believe just what Sageous is teaching . Also I think it's not a bad mantra...

The experience gives me confidence that I can in fact WILD! Just have to hold on to the patience longer and let the dream form...