side notes

16.06.2011

Lost and Very Naked (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This was my third, final and most well-remembered dream of the three that I had last night. It's taking me so long to get to writing this one because I went out with some friends today. Sorry. D:

I was living with my family again and this time, I was living with my -entire- extended family which was sort of trippy. My dad's office was connected to the building (he's now retired). I'll get back to that. I also spent the entirety of this dream wearing nothing but my panties and I tried to cover my nudity with my hands and hair as best I could.

Anyway. In the apartment that we were all living in, one of the women was cooking in the kitchen when the gas went wild and fire started spewing out of the gas valve. It didn't take long to put it out (or much effort, really) but I did run to my sister's room to wake her up and the entire time, the fire was letting out a deafening roar. It sort of sounded like I was in a wind tunnel. I ran back into the kitchen to see that the fire was being put out and that nothing was damaged and no one hurt. I slept(?) in my dream, woke up and walked to the back window only to run into a cousin on my dad's side of the family (who doesn't really exist) and he confessed to being the reason that the fire happened. He said he tried to fix the valve after fixing it but he couldn't do it, and when he couldn't, he decided to save himself the embarassment by not telling anyone. I kept walking with him for a while and ended up walking downstairs to a beach. Here, I realized that I was naked the entire time and decided to run back to get some clothes because I didn't want to be arrested for indecent exposure. So I started to run back inside but nothing was the same. There were no stairs leading upstairs, back to the apartment. Now, it was all Air Force offices, Family rooms and an airport.

The first area I had to run through was the airport but this section was short. I only remember coming to some escalators with signs above them that said things like "Only use this escalator if you're a loud prick" or "Jump up and down like a kid if you want to break this escalator". I didn't want to go up it but decided to anyway since I might get some help here. Luckily, I did and a man who was standing off to one side gave me an old cellphone with my dad's office number on speed dial. I called him and asked him to give me directions back to the apartment but he was busy talking to someone else who was in his office.

Here, I found an Airmen who had fallen from the floor above him in a stairwell. He was surrounded by large burlap bags of soil that he was apparently carrying. I called for help and two more airmen came up. They said the guy was only hungover and gave him a hard time about it. There was blood on the back of his head and he seemed like he had alcohol poisoning.

Just then, I had a strange image flash before me of Marines in sharp uniforms, at attention. The only thing was, they were upside down, balancing on their heads and using an extra pair of boots each to support their heads. Their faces were beaten and bloody but their eyes were closed and they were smiling. This and the bloodied, dirty Airmen were both very disturbing images for me.

Afterwards, I ended up in the "Family Center" part of the building, stole an Oreo milkshake from the table at a kid's party, made it back to the beach where I started somehow (it was now noonish. Before it was early in the morning) and gave up trying to make it back to the apartment.

Out of nowhere I was wearing purple clothes that was made out of grapes and I was singing with another woman in the bushes. The singing was so terrible that I decided that I didn't want to be there anymore and then I woke up.

Well yet again no dream remembered, very unusual for me to have such a dry spell but hey, we all have um!, will edit and re-write if anything pops into this mind of mine but very unlikley...was reading a thread last night about that bracelet you wear and there were alot of positives on it so think i'll give that a try tonight and will update any dreams tomorrow..sorry

[This is both a catch-up post and a repost. Apparently, there was a server crash recently that ate this entry after I posted it the first time.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Some events unfold that I'm not a part of. [I don't remember what they were now, but there was definitely a plotline involved, and I was definitely just an outside observer.] When these events are over, I find myself sitting in a movie theater, watching the end credits of a movie. I realize that all of the preceding events were a movie.

I walk out into the theater lobby, which is long, narrow, and wedge-shaped, growing slightly wider as I approach the entrance. I walk out through the theater's glass front doors onto the sidewalk. There, I meet up with my parents again.

My parents and I are in a strange, [possibly?] open-air, car-like vehicle with a hired driver. I'm showing them around the quaint, seaside downtown of Lake Worth [which, as usual for me in my dreams, looks absolutely nothing like it does in real life; it looks more urban]. We marvel at the awesomely cheesy anti-drug mural painted on the wall of one building.

[Different dream.] I'm flying above M. Road, traveling north, but facing south. I'm being pulled backward by that unknown, unseen force that so often does that in my flying dreams. I realize that I'm dreaming and take control of the situation by concentrating on the details of the scenery around me, as if I were going to stop to admire them. It works as intended: my backward motion slows, then stops. Then, I start flying forward under my own willpower, heading toward home (i.e., south). As I fly, I admire the rich detail of the scene around me and how much like reality it is.

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in a quiet, peaceful, suburban residential neighborhood, on a concrete walking path separated from the backyards on either side of it by fences. I hop along the sidewalk like an astronaut on the moon, making slow jumps that carry me several feet into the air, then slowly floating back down in an arc. I'm enjoying the fun of being in a low-gravity environment, which my dream environments often are.

I get up onto one of the fences and perform several floating glide-leaps from one parallel fence to another, combining jumping with flying. Then, I decide to try to change the dream environment to a different one by closing my eyes and spinning. I think, If I'm going to do that, I'd better start from a standing start. I jump off the fence I'm on and float gently down to the sidewalk. Once I'm standing on it, I think, Neopia, and close my eyes, but forget to spin around.

When I open my eyes, I'm in a much different suburban neighborhood. I'm standing in the middle of a straight street, looking down its length. It's lined on both sides with brightly colored, two-story houses with lush, green trees in their front yards. It doesn't look much like any of the official artwork of Neopia, but nonetheless, I become aware that this is Neopia, and that I've succeeded in my goal of changing the scene and getting there. I'm so excited about this that the scene winks out of existence after about two seconds, and I wake up. [Sigh.]

[Later, different dream.] I'm attending some special event at a theme park on behalf of [the company I've been teaching with]. I'm with SH and TS [two of my fellow teachers]. We're all wearing our white lab coats, and we're walking across a plaza that has a circular concrete beam running overhead, around the perimeter. I see some friends of mine wearing full rubberhead Sesame Street character costumes, also walking across the plaza in the opposite direction. I say to the young man in the Elmo costume who is carrying the head and looking sweaty and tired, “Hi, Mark. Go get some water.”

There are many other people there, changing into or out of costumes. Many of them are hanging their hangers on the concrete ring. TS suggests that we hang our lab coats from it, but I prefer to go back to the trailer, which [only in the dream, not in real life] has sides with panels that open to reveal closets [like my band trailer did in high school]. I want to put my lab coat there because I can make sure that trailer is locked.

--------------------------------------------
Side notes:

That first scene, where I realized that everything that had preceded it had just been a movie I was watching, was a particularly cool example of day residue. I had just been to the movies the evening before I had this dream. The recent article about how dreaming and watching movies produce very similar patterns of brain activity has informed the way I watch movies now; I always mentally compare the two experiences. In the movie I watched on this evening (Limitless), the ending felt exactly like being suddenly, rudely awakened by an alarm clock when you're still right in the middle of a dream. It's not surprising that that experience gave rise to an actual dream in which a movie ended and I suddenly realized, “oh, yeah, that didn't actually happen, I'm just watching a movie.” Both within the dream and in retrospect, that realization felt very similar to the realization, “oh, yeah, that was just a dream” that I've often had just after both false and real awakenings. Therefore, that moment of realization within that dream felt very much like a false awakening.

It belatedly occurs to me that Neopia is an entire planet. If I chose only one specific locale on that planet and made that the focus of my intentions, I'd probably have better success getting there.

Still half asleep, but I need to write this out. I cannot forget this one, there was too much.

It began by me moving in with my parents, or thinking about it. The house was really strange, there was a bar that seemed to sit underneath the house, but it was still outside. I was excited that me and my son were going to live with them. I remember talking to my mom about how I'd stay and help out until I found my own house. I invited some friends over, someone I had just met and a few others I knew. My aunt and uncle had shown up too. I was on a bed in a bedroom with one of my girl-friends and we were listening to the wind howling. It started to sound like voices and we started to freak out. Then I realized what it might be. It started to sound REALLY creepy. I told my friend to hold on and got close to the window and was looking out, it was daylight. My suspicion was confirmed when my uncle and dad came out and started laughing at us.

Then we're back in the living room and my uncle and dad are sitting at the table with my friends and they're all laughing playing cards and having a good time. I'm standing off to the side with my mom and my aunt. My aunt starts to tell me how f'ed up I was as a child. She told me I would try eating and selling ants when I was FIVE years old. My reaction, I was super pissed, because I knew this was a lie. I could remember being five. I told her that was fucked up and that she didn't know the truth. She and my mom were shaking their heads at me. I couldn't believe they thought of me this way. I started to get really angry about it, practically yelling at them for lying. My friends had all stopped and stared. I told my aunt that she was ALWAYS trying to prove that I was a fucked up person/druggie/what not. (Semi True. She has checked my wrists for shooting up one time just because I was wearing a beanie...) I got too worked up and decided to calm down. I told them to forget it and I'd stop talking about it.

Then I walked over to the table and everyone was having a good time again. I looked up at the stereo and there was some crappy oldies playing, maybe from the seventies or eighties. I asked my dad if it would be ok if I changed it. One girl agreed with me. My dad firmly said NO. I couldn't believe he wouldn't let me change the music. I told him that wasn't fair and the girl agreed. He told me no again.

At this point, my mom, my dad, we were all fighting. I stopped in the middle and politely asked my friends if they would leave or come back later. They all got up and left. I started to run around and get my things because I realized I COULD go home to my husband. I was having troubles getting all my things together. My son was sleeping in his chair. Me and my mom were fighting, and I can hardly remember what about, but it was intense, and very realistic to how we used to fight. I needed to get the carseat for my son which I realized was in her bedroom. I went to go get it and she followed me. I saw the lock on the door and stopped, because I knew she was going to lock me in to get me to stay. I kept trying to get her away from the door but she just wouldn't go. I went into the living room and picked up my son and held him on my lap. It was late at night now. I was going to wait til she fell asleep. I'm sitting there with my son on my lap, he's awake now. I'm staring at the clock above the TV and suddenly it's like time just passed without me even noticing. The clock read 1:57 PM. I looked at my mom and said no way. I haven't seriously been sitting here this whole time, awake, staring, along with my kid being awake on my lap. My mom nodded at me yes, that I was. I almost became lucid, because I couldn't believe it, but I ended up accepting it.

I got up and left finally. I took my kid home to my husband and was telling him some of what happened. Then I needed to go to the store for something and I go. I see my parents in the store and am trying to avoid them, so I slip in and grab a whole clothing rack of baby clothes. I took them to the register, and I accidently went behind the register coming around. In the area where employees are supposed to be only. They thought I was strange, but I got to the register and realized there were baby girl clothes in the mix that I didnt need. So I started pulling out the ones I didn't like as I walked back over to where I had gotten the clothes. My sister was with my parents, they were all shopping and seemed fine. They saw me but they didnt' speak to me. I went up to the shampoo and conditioner and wanted to try it out. It was strange looking, they were both in seperate, short, orange cylinder-looking jars. My mom said something about me coming back to the house and I nodded. I went back.

My friends were all there again. I was telling one how I was going to try this shampoo and I opened it. They laughed and asked if they should go get me a towel. I was like, OH, shit, maybe I can make it home in time to rinse it out. They laughed again. I put it in my hair and somehow must've rinsed it because I started putting the conditioner in my hair too. I suddenly realized I took too long and T, my husband, would be worried about me. I told J, my friend that I had to run but I'd be back. He shrugged. I also saw the guy I had just met, his name was Ian, I don't know any Ians. Anyway. I got distracted again with movies, J was watching a movie. I can't remember what it was, but I looked down at the dvds and saw "What Dreams May Come" and said, heyyy, this was the movie you told me to watch right? He looked at me questionably. I said nvm and got up to leave. I went outside and realized Ian had a split personality, that there HAD been two people here before and I realized it was the same guy, IAN. Idk.. I figured it out.

I leave and go home and T is gone. I had just gotten there and was putting my things away. Then he comes in asking where the hell was I. I told him that I had been at my parents and had taken more time then I thought I would. He didn't believe me at all. He started to accuse me of doing something else, but I interuppted, and told him to call J because I had JUST been with him not five minutes ago. He started to laugh, I knew we didn't have a cell phone. I told him to go to his moms and borrow her cell. He laughed again and said he had a device that allowed ppl to TEXT him. He said his daughter texted him all the time. I was like wtf... you have a DAUGHTER?? He laughed like he was just fucking with me. I'm holding the device and see a text from a girl I used to babysit. I thought it was weird. I start to feel weary because I hadn't slept. I think me and T started to fight, but everything after this gets hazy.

I think I woke up, thought about taking notes down because it was a very long dream... and I didn't want to forget it. I fell asleep again though and I went back in the dream I think... but then I was with someone who had a bunch of kids on her lap laying down. They had something wrong with them and she had chopped their heads in half surgically, they were still alive. They started to collapse in on eachother and the little boy's brain was pressed together so hard that it started to ooze. It was really gross. I told her and she popped the little girl on the side, rolling her eyes. She said the little girl was putting too much pressure on him...

I'm not sure, I remembered more earlier, now I don't... The strange thing about this all is that I went to bed only less than three hours ago. And I know this sounds weird, but sometimes I pray... and it is my birthday. I prayed that I would have vivid, meaningful, long, and possibly lucid dreams. And I'm kind of freaked out. I don't pray religiously really... I'm not a christian, I just pray for positive reinforcement, but I DO pray to God. It's how I was raised, so it's the guru in my head. Anyway, I just think it's really strange and that this dream MEANS somethng... I couldn't even go to back to sleep without typing it. I started taking notes and it took up too much room, so I had to come in here and type it. I'm still half asleep and the wind IS howling, it's creepy. I had to turn on Modest Mouse. I'm a little freaked out from what I experienced in the dream... hopefully I can go back to sleep...

There ARE things I missed, but I have to get up early and I don't want to go back and put the pieces in. Maybe I'll remember when I wake up, who knows... if I can even sleep. Goodnight...

06/10/11

There was a plague of some sort and everyone was getting sick. A lot of people were gathered together in this hospital type place, it was huge. Like an airport, it had restaraunts and what not. I believe it was my 21st birthday and I had two people with me, they were people I knew, but I cannot think of who they were. We went inside a restaraunt because we were hungry and I wanted to celebrate.

After this, I'm walking through one of the hallways and start coughing up blood. I knew I had it. So I found a room that I could slowly die in. Strange enough, I seemed to have accepted my upcoming death, even though I knew it would be slow and painful.

06/11/11

Took a nap, fell asleep watching the X-Files.

Soo, needless to say, my dream was a little creepy. It was nighttime and I forgot to shut my window. I heard someone mowing our lawn with headlights and it was really scary. I was crouched down on the floor with my son, hoping they wouldn't look in the window.

Also remember alien ghosts and JUST remembered I did become lucid. There was FBI everywhere and it was daylight again. I jumped off the ground hoping to fly, but I came back down and woke up.

06/12/11

I was in a large building and there was a room with a curtain and inside there were two showers across from eachother. I wanted to shower and had no towel, so I walked across to another room just like it where there were a couple people. I can't remember if they were showering or not. I recognized a towel that we have in WL and as I went to grab it I asked to make sure nobody was using it. They told me that some girl was. I was slightly annoyed because I knew it was my towel. I walked back to the other room and began to undress. I left the curtain open and it didn't seem to matter to me. It felt alright, nobody cared. Like a Co-Ed locker room or something...

I'm in the shower and notice my grandpa walks in. (somewhere between that last sentence and this next one I changed clothes.) He was talking to me about a game, like he was my coach. He wanted me to exercise but he said something like, "Ohh, you might not want to spend THIS time training." I didn't really feel like working out but I didn't want to disappoint him. I told him I didn't mind. I can't remember anything else.

(This is a re-up after the site crash :-(

I'm definitely not going to take the time to post all of my dreams on here, but I will use this DJ to post a chosen few interesting or well written ones. A lot of them are just rough notes or outlines, but occasionally I have the time and inclination to flesh them out more.

Just a note that most of my DJ entries will be coming from my phone and have a sort of self-imposed format, which makes it easier for me to enter and manipulate. (If anyone is really that interested, heh.)

They look something like this:
6/11/2011.GLD.joelsKitchen.birdBall

Date
G - means a Galantamine attempt
LD - means Lucid Dream (duh!)
and then the key elements of the dream separated by periods
<entries in here are my thoughts in the dream>
... means a significant break in the narrative / memory or a switch of scenes

Dream on!

There was a dream that kept repeating so I thought I was dreaming because I thought that I just saw it. So there was this one guy who was supposed to run up the hill and kick my ass, but since I was lucid this time, he didn't. I threw a bag over his head and went ninja on his ass non-stop. But he still didn't die.

Lucidity: 7/10
Vividness 10/10
Length: ~5 Min.

I became lucid all of a sudden at the map Highrise from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 without doing a reality check. So I started walking towards the building to my right and jumped on top of it, there was another 10 floors so I jumped on those as well. When I found a door so I could try to find my friend Javier's mental dream body and attempt to make him lucid, I held on to the door knob and said "When I open this door Javier will be behind it!" and attempted to open it, when I did, it just opened up into the next room. So then I closed the door and rubbed my hands together to increase the dream time. But then for some reason I started to walk away from the door and I walked up some stairs, thinking it was real life.

Side note 1: This was the night before my english exam earlier today.
Side note 2: When I went to bed I tried using a FILD technique which didn't exactly work.
Side note 3: This dream was very vivid.

Tonight I dreamt that I arrived at my school 5 minutes before the exam started. But then I was on a bus. I got a call from my teacher reminding me that my exam was starting, so I was like "oh fuck oh shit", stood off the bus, and told my teacher that I was "taking a shit, it might take a while". I looked at my phone which said the clock was 10:35. I then looked at a bus plan to see that the next bus driving back to where my school is, would arrive at 10:35. Then I saw my parallel-class' teacher and a sensor. They asked "what are you doing here" but didn't wait for an answer. I drove with them back to my school, which the dream skipped.
When I arrived at my school, I had somehow lost my t-shirt. I really didn't mind, but apparantly people on the hallway found it amusing and laughed at me. I arrived at the exam 15 minutes late.

I'm properly sick. I have a massive lung infection combined with a cold and some other stuff I won't go into.
This greatly affects my dreams.
My recall is remarkably good though. I suppose this is because I wake up about every 10 minutes because I have to clear my lungs.
My dreams are quite random, they usually combine multiple different scenarios that clearly do not belong together.
Pretty much all my dreams are about my sickness, it is always represented in some rather clear way.
I often return to the same dream after waking up, especially this one:

I'm in a tall building, sort of like a skyscraper.
Somehow I know that this building represents my body.
The building is being infested by some sort of bio-goo with tentacles and other biomass/insect kind of stuff. (think deadspace / alien etc)
Eggs grow in the goo, hatching all sorts of monsters which try to further spread the goo over my body.

I'm not really sure what to do at first, I feel a bit helpless, but then suddenly I realize that I am (the one and only) Duke! (Duke Nukem)
I grab some Devastators (Dual rocket launchers) and start going to town on the monsters in the room I'm currently in.
Whilst doing this I use typical Duke phrases such as "Hail to the king baby" etc.

I quickly realize that there seems to be a near infinite supply of monsters though.
I can't possibly take them on all on my own.

I have double vision at this point. I can see first person, pretty much like in a first person shooter,
but at the same time I can also see the current room in a top down view, much like a real-time strategy game.
I move the top down view all the way to the top floor, trying to find my main base.
I find a (starcraft2) Hatchery with a few mineral patches next to it.
I decide that I should build some Infestors, because they are very cost effective, and since my body is being
infested, I'm obviously pretty low on resources.
(This makes perfect sense, right?)

I control the Infestors from the top down view, casting fungal growth for crowd control and to keep those nasty monsters in place,
whilst at the same time causing havoc in first person with all sorts of guns, but mostly the Devastators.

On each floor, there is some sort of queen, which I have to defeat in order for the infestation to clear on that floor.
The queens look like infested women. (Not like in Duke Nukem... more like Infested Kerrigan in Starcraft, except more infested and less human.)
I spot the queen for this room and fire my Devastators in the approximate direction.
Not exactly precision weaponary.
The smoke trails from the rockets quickly block out most of my vision.
Suddenly, I notice that the queen is now behind me.
What the fuck? can that bitch teleport?

She spits some kind of green liquid onto me, eww!
She's too close to fire rockets at her, so I quickly change to a pump-action shotgun.
(I do this just like in a first person shooter. I move my current weapon to the bottom left, out of my vision,
and when I move my hands back up I'm holding the new weapon.)
I keep shooting straight into her chest, but she doesn't appear to be taking much damage,
even though every time I hit her she has to take a few steps back.

*click* What the fuck? Empty?
The queen slaps me in the face, and I am thrown across the room against a wall.
What is this shit? I have to reload the shotgun?
I'm the fucking Duke! The Duke does not need to reload!
I drop the shotgun, replacing it with double-barreled shotguns. Two of them!
Knowing that I no longer have to reload because... well, I am the Duke, I start shooting relentlessly at the queen saying:

"Eat shit and die!"

After emptying a good 50+ shells into the Queen she finally drops to the ground, with green goo leaking from all sorts of holes.
Meanwhile I've cleaned up most of the monsters with my Infestors, this is working out rather well.

I suddenly hear a voice, as if I was on skype:

"Dude, you micro like a Grand Masters, but your macro is fucking Silver at best."

What is he on about? I change my top down vision back to my hatchery, and notice I'm now completely mined out.

"I'm fucking mined out you idiot, how do you want me to macro? there are no more minerals!"
"Eh, I guess you're fucked then, just remake."
"Remake? Are you fucking stupid? This is my body! I can't just remake!"

What an idiot.
I drag his Skype window into my vision and end the call.
I also set myself to busy, I can't afford distractions right now.

I pet one of my Infestors and we start marching downstairs to the next floor.
As we walk down the stairs I start humming the Duke Nukem theme.
The Infestors seem to enjoy it...


I wake up plenty of times, but I usually fall back asleep very quickly and I end up back in the dream, usually where I left off.
Sometimes I get a bit scared, feeling like this dream is going to turn into a nightmare.
But when that happens I become lucid for a very brief period of time, and I can prevent that from happening.
I never stay lucid for more than one or two seconds though.

I had to get up early this morning to see a doctor because I hurt one of my toes and it got infected, so I only got ~5 hours of sleep last night.
After getting back from the appointment, I was just lying in my chair watching an online stream of someone playing SC2.
I was really tired, to the point where I was unable to really focus on the stream, plus my toe was still hurting which was annoying.
I just leaned back and started dozing off. I noticed the sensation of falling asleep and randomly decided that I'll try to WILD...

... I start seeing through my closed eyelids, I must have entered a dream.
I get up and notice that I was sitting on the couch, even though I was on my chair when I was awake. Weird.
I look at my toe because it is still hurting a bit, but the pain is different.
There is no longer a bandage around it, in fact, it looks perfectly healthy.

I investigate my aura and can clearly see that there are repairs going on in my toe region.
It looks really interesting, like broken stings that are webbing themselves together again.
I hold my left hand over my toe, summoning my phoenix wings, to see if I can somehow accelerate the healing process.
Some energy is flowing from my hand towards my toe, but in all honesty I have no idea what I'm doing.
Sure, I know that phoenix abilities includes healing, but I have no idea how to do it.

Not really sure what to do, I decide to summon Faye.
I call out her name, but nothing happens.
I realize that just calling out her name is not enough, I have to actually mean for her to appear.
I do it again, this time wishing for her to come to me, and she appears in front of me.
She looks different yet again.

"Hey!"
"Hi Hyu. I brought you your Yo-yo."

Right! The Yo-yo!
She gives it to me and I look at it closely, touching the wooden surface.
It looks very simple and old-fashioned.

"Does it do anything?"
"Of course it does!"
"So, how do you use it?"
"I suppose just like a normal Yo-yo."

Makes sense.
I attach the string to my right middle finger and launch the Yo-yo towards the ground.
It remains at the bottom of the string, spinning wildly and making some noise.
Nothing special happens, which surprises me a bit.

"Huh? What does it do then, it doesn't seem to be special."

She replies with a serious attitude:

"Well, it spins Hyu. It spins."

I look at Faye. She starts laughing hysterically.

"You're such a troll!"

After that I wake up.
What's up with the trolling lately? oO

Looking at the last entry, you'll notice I'd long since abandoned my dreamwalking efforts. This was due to a combination of my (then) frustrating lack of success and the arduous business of last year's school work which made the preparation for sleep and dreams and the upkeep of a dream journal seem somewhat chorelike at a time when I didn't have the mental focus to spare. Now, having graduated and finished my PharmD, I find myself in a limbo between having graduated, obtaining licensure, and finding a job which leaves me with a lot of free time. I've been enjoying several fun, adventurous, and pleasant dreams the past few nights (the four quadrant pillars, the middle settlement, and being alarmed that the middle people do not actively defend themselves from the dangerous creatures from the pillars!), which remind me of my old lucid dreaming efforts. Being that my mental obligations are quite sparing and free time abound nowadays, I feel that it is my duty to return to pursuing mastery of my nocturnal subconscious, so starting tonight (or this morning I guess, I've been rolling into a 4AM-noonish sleep pattern) I'll be once more laying the groundwork starting with good-old simple dream recall.

I don't know if I'll get around to finishing my last summary post or if I'll continue that practice going forward, but I'm going to take it easy and play things by ear for now.

I am walking aimlessly over a big field.
Something feels completely wrong.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I am a bit scared.
Somehow the whole experience is a bit frightening even though it shouldn't be.
I have a feeling like the color is being drawn out of the world.
I don't like this at all.

Fortunately I then realize that I'm dreaming, but that scares me even more...
Usually whenever I get that sort of nightmare feeling, which I have right now,
it goes away immediately after I become lucid, but this time, it doesn't.

Suddenly, I feel a very scary presence behind me.
I am nearly too afraid to turn around to face it, but I end up doing it.
There's a man. Even though he's dressed in white, he's dark... so very dark.
It's his presence, it is his urge to kill me, I can feel it... so strongly.

He's wearing a white and silver armor with a white coat and he is wielding a very large polearm.
He approaches me slowly.
Why am I so afraid of him?

He calls me by a name that I do not know, but it is clearly meant for me, and I have no doubt that I am the person he is looking for.
He also calls me a dragon and a dream warrior and claims he is a paladin himself.

"You shall die by my hand in the name of the lord."

I am so fucking scared. I don't know what to do, I feel completely helpless.
He takes his polearm and charges me. FUCK!

Somehow my body reacts by itself.
The dragon within me awakens, or rather explodes. I have never powered up even remotely this fast.
I instinctively summon my katana trying to block the inevitable hit.

I black out for a second as he hits me...

The land is on fire. I am fully charged up. My aura burns, the sky is red and the clouds are burning.
I am so afraid, afraid to die. I don't care if I use too much power, I just want to survive somehow.
He keeps attacking me relentlessly, and I am only barely able to dodge and block his hits. Everything happens so fast.
The moves I use are not my own, my body reacts instinctively, and I know if I interrupt this I will die, if I think, I will die.

"Do you know how we kill dragons?"

He activates some device on his polearm and my katana dematerializes in my hand and rematerializes in a holster attached to his polearm.

"You dragons are helpless without your weapons."

Fuck... FUCK!
He walks towards me slowly. He knows without my katana I don't stand a chance, there's no need for him to rush.
I'm so afraid.
In my desperation I call out into the fabric of space and scream as loudly as I can:

"YUYA!!!"

He's getting closer and closer, just a few more steps.
Finally, he strikes, slowly...

But right before his polearm hits me, I hear the sound of a metallic collision.
I look up. Another man is standing in front of me, blocking the polearm with his sword.
He looks at me over his shoulder.
I know this man. I know him so well...

Silver! It is Silver! A man from my childhood dreams, a friend in combat, just like Yuya and Selene.
Then I see Yuya, she is here as well. They must have arrived at the same time.
However, they clearly appeared independently, because Yuya is quite surprised to see Silver and even calls out his name in amazement.

Silver looks at me.

"Fight!"

What a simple word, but such complexity behind it.
Suddenly I am no longer afraid. I am no longer alone.
The nightmare feeling disappears and the paladin takes a few steps back.

"You're friends of the dragon. All of you will die. No one opposes the lord."

Silver puts a hand on my shoulder:

"He's a paladin. Paladins kill dragons."
"Now take back your sword, you have the power to cast it into the void."

I order my katana to be cast back into the fabric of space and summon it again, and sure enough I'm holding it in my hand.
The paladin doesn't seem too surprised, he's confident that he can take on all three of us at the same time.

"Well done dragon. By asking your friends for assistance you have signed their death warrant."
"Dragons are horrible creatures. How you are able to make friends is beyond me, all of you must die."

I am angry. He is blinded by his beliefs, he has no idea what it means to be a dragon.
He is committing genocide without understanding anything.

"You are but a fool following a false god."
"A man who only believes but does not try to understand is nothing."

The paladin seems furious because I called his lord a false god.

Even with the power of all 3 of us combined, we only seem to be on even terms.
But it feels just like old times, like in my childhood dreams where I would fight together with Yuya Silver and Selene.
We fight together so well, like a perfect choreography.
Silver and I both use our swords and direct energy attacks, whereas Yuya uses her water magic.
But somehow, it just isn't enough.

Yuya is clearly struggling, and I am very worried for her. If something happens to her it will be my fault.

"First I will kill your girl. I will kill her slowly. And I will make you watch."

I can see fear in Yuya's eyes after hearing that.

Suddenly, my mind is blank.
I am calm. Perfectly calm.
It is the calm you experience when your anger is so strong that somehow you drop back into a state of calm.

"Stop."

Silver and Yuya stop, not doubting my request for a second.
I drop my katana to the ground and cancel all of my dragonic energy.

"You fool. Are you sacrificing your self?"
"There is but one fool here."

I power back up, but not on dragonic energy.
I use the same energy I use to summon my phoenix wings, a much more pure and divine power.
My phoenix wings appear, but not on my hand this time.
They appear on my back and they are huge and colorful.
This power is so very different from the dragonic one.

I look into the paladins eyes and take a step forward.
For some reason I am right in front of him now, I have no idea how I managed to approach him so fast,
and clearly neither does he.
With my right hand I reach into the body of the paladin and grab onto his very soul and pull it out.
It feels like an ability I can only use if I truly believe that a person deserves to die, if there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind.
His body drops to the ground dead.

I look into the eyes of the helpless soul I hold in my hand.

"Wherever you may go, let it be known that if anyone in the whole of existence threatens my love again, I will hunt them down."
"I don't care if they are paladin, I don't care if they are king or even if they are god. I will hunt them to beyond the planes of existence and I will crush them with my bare hands."

I watch his soul burn away in purple flames as I crush it with my hand.
My anger finally disappears.
I can't believe how angry I just was.

I hold out my hand to Silver and he shakes it.

"Thank you."
"So long."

He turns around and vanishes.
He has always been a man of few words and I have a feeling I will not see him again anytime soon.

The rest of my memories of this dream are quite foggy.
Why did I call Yuya "my love"?
Was she really my lover, or did I love her as a friend I trust with my life?

This was also remarkably scary for a lucid at first, but it turned out quite amazing.

My dream recall has been different lately. Usually i remember something when i wake up and that's gonna be my entire recall. Lately i've been waking up without recall only to get flashbacks of the dream back to me at random.

I dreamed about tidying my room i even brought up the vacuum cleaner wich i never do unless i'm expecting someone to come over. (i was cleaning my dream home because i was expecting company!!!!)

I remember a passionate scene where i was saying goodbye to someone. In the freedom of a dream there's like no boundaries. It was very nice to be able to really express love without the bad feelings of guilt and other things that hold us back. That someone i saw yesterday and i kinda knew it's probably the last time i'm ever going to see her in person. We never really got closure or anything so for the sake of being happy about the situation i'm going to assume this was a shared dream and she won't have any negative feelings left-over towards me. It's a perfect ending.

I was in Island Park (real place), a man promised a real trip. I know it meant acid. I felt anticipation and then rejection when it did not come through.

Then I'm traveling somewhere. My dream cars are almost always like clown cars. Like I'm oversized or the car is too little, and I feel like there is never a roof. Anyway.. I'm driving and going over hills and I notice I can see the outlines of the states and it's like I'm driving on a map. I was between Kansas and Missouri. I felt lost and I didn't know where I was supposed to be going, but I know I had a destination. I don't know if I was being followed the whole time or if anyone had been with me, but I remember shouting at someone in another car, telling them I was bound to get lost and I needed help. It was someone I knew, but that's all I know about them.

According to my memory, next I was in some sort of forest, but it was slightly cartoon-like. I might've been in the same dream, because I know more came before this, but all I can remember is thinking of Yogi Bear and then a bear-like creature appeared. At that moment, I felt I had just figured out something big. Something spiritual, something for myself. In fact, thinking the name Yogi, the appearence of the creature, and the epiphany-like feeling all hit me simultaneously. I wish I could remember more about this part, because it's making me think of my spirit guide.

>>> Later on, during a nap.

I'm dreaming of being at work (where I had just been.) I'm sitting on pot of chili along with a friend, and it actually felt quite awkward, but I was supposed to sit on it to keep it warm. Then once it was at the right temp, we were supposed to stick it on the stove-top. I also remember talking to a co-worker about one of the managers and something that was going on with him. I remember looking around and realized that the manager I was talking about had been staring at me the whole time. I pretended that I didn't say anything.