side notes

9th June 2020

Catching up on DJ again.

Dream:

(last part, my original notes sort of start at the end but cycle back to this point in some way)

Was in a WoW-like game or reality. There was this nest on a cliff I had to reach from this insanely long ladder along another cliff face. I wasn't sure how high I had to climb before I'd be able to make the jump towards the nest.

At some point I jumped and I remember sort of gliding a bit, eventually reaching the nest. I remember noticing a book covered in twigs and small bones. I looked this up on a popular WoW database to read comments on either the book or this location. Then I wiped it clean (from what? dust?) but don't recall what happened after that.

Some guy riding a bear mount? Not sure. Then I remember myself, taking off the ground on a nether drake. I flew up a bit but not that much. There were Shattrath guards following after me through a forest that was not like Terokkar next to the city. The guards were throwing hammers of wrath at me as they pursued, most hitting me but doing little damage although this was whittling my health points away.

I knew we were still in the Outlands because there was a cliff's edge, and nothing but void beyond and below; I remember the characteristic Nagrand-like sky. I rode my drake over this threshold of sorts and from past the edge, looped under the floating land mass, hiding there with my drake in some sort of underground cave area...

I saw blood elves fly over and away on their bloodhawks toward the endless horizon and void. The distraction worked and I lost them. Then I left the bottomless "cave" underground and went much higher than before. Something was happening and a massive black dragon was appearing and the sky also dramatically changed to darkness and red tones. There was some NPC shouting something, but I don't remember what. I remember having passing thoughts about Deathwing and Alextstraza and how they looked feral with their "old/out of date" models.

Then I remember flying toward the dragon and at some point jumping off the back of my drake and landing on a platform (on the dragon?). There, I found blocks like in Boundless. Interesting patterned blocks, like mosaic and celtic twist patterns on stone and they had red and black colour schemes. I began to "vein mine" the blocks the vein mining technique eventually stopped working and so I gave up on harvesting these interesting blocks.

The next part I remember, I had ended up on a red dragon's back. We fly over mountains and cliffs and from here I spot the nest and jump off, gliding through the air somehow and trying to land on the nest. Instead, the winds lead me to the ladder.

---

Notes:
- I think it was in this dream; the area in which I found the bear mount rider was something like the WoW zone Grizzly Hills, with tall pine-like trees.
- The way my original notes were made have altered my memory of how the dream's chronology worked out but at the same time it has created a nearly perfect cyclical flow of the dream which did lead me to remembering details I otherwise may not have recalled that morning.
- The black dragon may have appeared before I thought of Deathwing, but I believe the two would have come in tandem regardless of which appeared first.
- This dream involved a lot of flying or gliding and basically high altitude locations with little solid ground to speak of. In the dream and game worlds I don't typically ever have a fear of heights, despite the fact that in reality they make me feel uncomfortable as I become highly aware that a mistake could cost me, fatally so even.
- Over the last few months I have had passing thoughts of the Burning Crusade and about nether drakes, so this dream probably came about as a materialisation of that or as a self-feeding experience.

4th August 2020 ~11:30

Dream:

Near the end of a stupidly long non-lucid part; I was falling through a pipe, I was with a squad to take something out in a facility. But then as I was falling, everything seemed still.

I was in a void of sorts and time seemed to pass slower, the others were still here with me. It felt like being in water, and there was a similar visual effect. The squad leader, turned to me and said "you must pick the right one this time!" and I suddenly saw a vision of who to pick.

Then I was in a room. There were three guardians and some other characters. I picked the one from my vision. It was true that it was the start of a cycle that I was now breaking, at the start of this long non-lucid part I was in a very similar situation.

But this time I had picked "correctly". As a result, my consciousness shifted, I was now the guardian I'd picked. I noticed my hands, I had three fingers and one thumb. I became lucid but it came slowly, not like in the past.

There was no "aha!" moment or sudden shift. I realised I was in a version of my mom's first office room. The characters were gone, I think; and to confirm my lucidity further I grabbed a metal shelving unit in the room and threw it through a wall, fully expecting it to go through as if it were a ghost, and it did!

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, since I hadn't fully expect to be lucid. I decided to indulge in one of my fantasies and decided to become a giant anthropomorphic lizard. It sort of worked... I saw myself in third person, wearing a labcoat (my artificial dream sign) as an anthro lizard. But I wanted to be myself in first person, I get tired of seeing things in third person in dreams and so I willed it and then was myself as the lizard. I looked down and saw the city-sprawl below me. I had reptilian-like feet with claws and I could see I had an emerald green skin but it was not as dark as I wanted. I tried to give myself different sexual features but it didn't work either.

I was happy enough the transformation worked in the basic sense in any case and started to have some fun by putting myself against the ground and sort of rubbing along it for lack of better words. I paused and checked my hands again, just having a good look at them. They were hardly as scaly as I'd expected and this felt disappointing but I carried on. I remember noticing the atmosphere effect but oddly enough when I was standing I didn't notice the curvature effect of the planet. I was big enough that I should have been able to notice it.

While the terrain did get sort of crunched/destroyed/etc by whatever I did, I wasn't able to see the cities in any great amount of detail and could not notice any mountains either. I was too big I suppose. I could feel my tail at several points but overall the feel of my body was mostly whole/complete.

Spoiler for Self-indulged arousal:

Still, I let myself get aroused by my fantasy and didn't try to change this fact and eventually just started pleasuring myself. Somehow it didn't take much to get to orgasm and it was very oddly and easily controlled, even though its effect was not quite what I'd expect. The physical sensations were mostly accurate and I enjoyed controlling them.

After this self-indulging, I realised the city/landscape I'd been having fun on and with was really just a square section in a rather large room. At the edges, the atmosphere effect sort of cut off, it was interesting.

I was standing up and looked around the room for the first time; lots of metal pipes and dark metal things, like grates and slits where some natural light came through from. It had an extremely industrial look. As I looked around I still felt that I was very big, but the room's scale made me feel smaller in a sense, despite how much room I took.

My lucidity was fading a little and I'd become a bit bored, I didn't expect to end my fantasy so soon but this was obviously the result of not pre-planning any of this. I saw a character less than half my size, by a sewer-tunnel looking bit. I approached, I asked him "Who are you?", quite curious about this metal-flesh sort of monster, the look only describable as being drawn from many such archetypes.

He gave me a reply veiled in mystery, that I cannot recall anymore, but he did not answer my question in its most basic form and I didn't think of asking again. I got bored of him and decided he was quoting from something, but I forget what he was saying, unfortunately.

I looked around again. This felt so different from my previous lucid experiences. I was calm, and it didn't take much effort to be calm; the dream was far less vivid and detailed than other lucids and indeed even less than some non-lucids, but I appreciated this moment. I enjoyed not feeling my daily pain.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard a deep echoing voice. It told me "You must kill your brother, remember?". Some less conscious part of me, replied automatically "I know, I know! But not now." Before I could add anything of my own will, the voice spoke again to the effect of "Very well, he shall be kept alive for now." The voice faded completely and I simply finished by again automatically saying "Good."

I didn't appreciate this family-related intrusion into my lucidity but realised it was from a deeper part and so didn't really wish to alter it.

My lucidity may have been fading again but I decided to simply explore these strange halls, carelessly stepping over that square world I'd been playing with earlier and heading for a doorway on the opposite corner from where I was. There were many artificial warm light accents around the metal halls. I eventually found myself on a gantry bit and there were random people both there and on a lower tier. I played around with some telekinesis on some red and blue barrels, trying to lob them but doing so poorly at first. I started to gain a more intuitive understanding as I did it but it did not feel as "mentally driven" as I'd expected, having to move my hands a fair bit.

My form had been consistent through my lucidity, I still had reptilian traits and my hands were clawed now, I recall. A random human character next to me looked up to me and said "Don't throw them with your arms like a real barrel." Or something like that. I understood from this to use hand motions more. I tried lifting a barrel and pulling it toward me, having done so too much and then pushing it forward a little more with some related hand motions.

I tried to hit a person in the lower tier with the barrel but it didn't quite work or something. Then I went down some stairs. I was in a mall area and my lucidity was fading but not gone. A dream character was upset with me, he was some manager for the mall. "You're ruining everything with your lucidity!" He said, or something.

He was extremely upset that I was doing whatever I pleased. There was a woman nearby I'd somehow gotten fired or something (but she was all the more happy about it) and the man became angry and he wanted to have a serious go at me now. But I somehow just turned it against him, kind of willing some help from the woman and she automatically started defending me, distracting the manager man. I was no longer lucid at this point and had been letting myself go along with the dream too much. Eventually I just woke up.

---

Edit:

Spoiler for Notes (in spoiler due to their length):

- Because I wasn't expecting to have a lucid dream so spontaneously, the whole journey through lucidity felt a little bit premature even as I was dreaming; part of my reason for continuing to do checks even while lucid was because I was having trouble believing I was indeed lucid but with such a different (lower) vividness compared to previous experiences. Ideally I need to create some scripts for "episodes" of what I'd like to do in future lucid dreams.

- The most prominent sub-conscious threshold crossing was definitely the part with the echoing voice. I felt myself speak in reply in a way I've never really felt myself speak before, where the feeling of what I was saying wasn't "mine" in the sense of my lucid awareness. The voice referred to the death of one of my older siblings (T); this has a context as far as I can tell, as I used to have dreams both about T dying and about me murdering him, when I was much younger, in my early teens I think. I have of course thought about those old dreams many times, but they had not recently been consciously present in my mind, so this experience was really quite interesting, but I am not too interested in putting any special meaning into it for the time being; I would rather let it manifest itself (the voice or context) again in the future and simply see where it wants to go.

- In the dream I did not appreciate this intrusion mostly because I prefer to keep family-related thoughts separate from personal indulgences and so on, in good part because of personal experience in waking life of finding it annoying. On the other hand, I did not wish to dismiss anything forcibly since I know that can be counter-productive and in all likelihood may just work against my lucidity. In the future I will remain more open to such intrusions and try to explore them to know if there is something "resolvable" within their contexts.

- The fact that my dream self after the transformation was wearing a labcoat was interesting, because I had not lucidly suggested this and when I took over into first person of my dream self once again, I was no longer wearing it. I take this mostly as a sign that my artificial introduction of it as a dream sign has become somewhat successful.

- I expect that part of the low detail of the (comparatively) smaller landscape and cities was due to both the fact I'd somehow made myself marginally "too big" but also due to the fact that it was a spontaneous decision, not allowing me to really try and imagine the detail as required. I have seen enough birds' eye points of views that my dream mind should be able to simulate the perspective correctly; it was mostly as though the details were blurred and unclear, rather than missing or incorrect.

- This lucid experience was radically different in feel due to the decreased vividness compared to previous ones, but what really felt different was just the sense of calm and serenity of my mind. Although I can't say I was thinking completely clearly, I was also able to appreciate the nuances of being conscious in the dream world in a way I simply haven't had time to do so in the previous experiences; by comparison, they had all felt extremely rushy.

- During the experience I completely forgot my long-standing desire to look for the blue-eyed black lizard, something else I should include in my "scripts".

- While I have been more mindful throughout the day to do RCs more often, I don't believe this was the sole cause but a factor in what promoted lucidity's occurrence. There are several things I need to point out to myself here:
-- This dream effectively came about as a WBTB, because after my first waking at 8:30 or so, I had gotten up, had passing thoughts about WBTB and as I got back in bed reminded myself that I was capable of lucid dreaming, I had done it before.
-- I am again on a combination of medication that helps my sleep be more restful compared to its native state.
-- On top of that, I started taking the B vitamin complex too, which has certainly made changes to my dreaming experience, and to a much greater degree than I'd imagined it ever would, if at all.

4th August 2020 8:30

Dream (Fragmented):

Fairly long and vivid, completely continuous all the way through, though I remember the last parts better, mostly.

+ The very first bit I recall, was in a maintenance tunnel of sorts. It was a typical grey-white looking tunnel, painted brickwork, artificial and cold lights, but quite bright. There was piping painted the same way. I was configuring a gun that fired four shots simultaneously and each barrel could be re-rolled to have a random element. I remember testing the gun each time I re-rolled the stats.

+ In one earlier bit I was around my old home area and was going to play basketball with some black friends, after I'd asked what they were up to or something. We got to a basketball arena of some kind, it looked odd, it was indoors now and was all rusty and/or fleshy. I didn't care much. In the end the game was more like half basketball, half rugby and somehow I needed my sibling T's help to finish the game so I had to go find him or something.

Then, the last part;

I was at some sort of religious gathering, there were pews and there was a seat reserved for a representative of each major religion and some seats reserved for representatives of other smaller religions, but the representatives themselves were absent. A woman appeared, she was dressed in what I can only remember as a "revealing" dress; she was a seductress of some sort and teased these religious representatives. But they knew her as is if she did this regularly and they let themselves be entertained by her presence.

I was stuck behind a screen of some sort, like an acrylic screen. Then I got out of that place somehow. My old school friend, JC, appeared at some point when I was outside. Dark and moody streets, maybe a bit wet even. Night time but lit by neon signs and other such things. Me and JC knocked someone out and I remember shooting a group of patrolling guards in a line, taking each one out. Then JC took a hazmat from one of these guys.

(Cut some of this bit short because of my pain)

We walked at brisk pace, for quite a long way; through a city, then a mall, a toilet roll store (with vividly coloured packaging), then a baby store, inside an ASDA/Walmart place and then we get held up in some queue for the supermarket. So we started running and jumped over a balcony or stair bit onto an outdoor area, and the crowd stuck in the queue got angered by this for some reason and many of them followed suit. It was day time, I remember around noon or afternoon. Sunny and I recall the grass by the side of the pavement and general greenery.

I tried to sprint. Running felt slow, but not as bad as in nightmares from my childhood. It mostly just felt annoying, but someone nearly tripped me up from behind (stepping on my heel). I didn't look back but sort of had a rear vision? JC caught up to me and took off the hazmat mask. We approached a gas station next to where his home supposedly was in the dream. JC shot a guard that he'd initially forgotten was there. I told him he was an idiot, because they had cameras at the gas station, and what had he just done? Taken his mask off.

But we were on the final stretch to getting to his home and I woke up, sweating, as seems to be normal when I have these vivid and intense dreams.

---

Notes:
- I haven't seen JC in a dream in a while but oddly enough his likeness was very much as I remember it from my teens, when I was at school with him. He was slightly shorter than me too.
- The basketball arena was odd but I think it probably came from recently playing certain games; for some reason the concept of arena was enough to cause the two things to associate this way.
- T's appearance matched the dirty and partly grotesque appearance of the arena.

- This DJ entry is called pre-cursor because of the next entry, which took place today too.

Interruption to the DJ catch up to put one from the past night. Some particularly detailed dreams, but I ended up having so much initial recall of so many dreams that in the end I let go of many and only made notes of a couple. Of note is the fact that last night I took for the first time a multi-vitamin B complex. It somehow did increase dream vividness far beyond what I expected.

---

2nd August 2020

Dream:

In space. In a game like Freelancer, flying a ship with a similar camera view as the game would have. I am on a server and I interact with some other people, but it's a small and private server.

I remember at some point discussing something with someone and then bringing up a list looking at all the potential guns and turrets there were. There were Nomad weapons that went by names such as "Redeemer" and came in three different marks. I remember thinking that it was silly to call it redeemer because there should be a Class Ten weapon using that as an acronym. The turrets list was like a "give mode" menu too, but I didn't have access to that function.

Everything was so detailed, I remember asteroids and distant nebulas and overall the sense of scale was just about right. I'm not sure I flew with a specific aim in mind but I found a Klingon wreckage of a Warbird or something. I shot its turrets so that I could loot them, and I wanted to do so quickly so that someone else couldn't interrupt me or steal them from me.

Then very close by was a station where I landed my ship. I got out but don't remember doing so physically, and then was inside the station. It was like a hospital mixed a bit with an office, and now the server people were here with me as a group? But something has a Farscape feel to it. Seems poorly lit or dark, but visibility is OK.

I forget some details but eventually H is with me at some point and we are waiting at the end of some hall. There are other people here, just sitting on some kind of benches, all waiting same as us. It was like a lobby? The light here mostly comes from the floor, a bit blue-ish, not even just a cold light, actually blue-ish. There are some commercial type fridges with the metal framed glass doors and they have cans of drink in them and I open one of them behind someone and fiddle with or organise some cans.

Then eventually we go through a doorway. We're outside, it's day time, slightly cloudy but bright though I didn't notice shadows properly and we are visiting a church here to do some work. The transition into this area was perfectly seamless.

The church was unusual, it was very open and seemed to be in the ruins of a massive old cathedral, some parts more ruined than others. But overall there was no "ceiling" to speak of and it was an open church. I could hear the wind and the leaves of tall trees surrounding the area, I could hear this very clearly in the dream.

The floor was all just grassy turf and there was no flooring really, but there were brand new things and some old things here in the main congregation area of this new church. There was a wooden house of some kind, which was full-size and looked just like the typical thing seen in a nativity, just bigger effectively.

But two kids were following us, they seemed curious. Though I got the feeling from H it'd be better if they weren't following us, so as we approached a wall panel between some old pillars, we went behind a wooden carved statue of Jesus. The statue featured prominently the colours red and blue on the clothing, and His hair was curly and dark, as was His beard. He did have a crown of thorns, too. The colours seemed a bit worn but probably better than could be expected for something out here in the elements.

Anyway, H pushed some panel behind the statue and we went through and it shut. Though the structure was very open, this didn't really limit the kids following us, but it made it more difficult; H then went around more sneakily trying to just get past them or spook them or something. Either way, the whole time H seemed to know what he was doing and I just followed his lead as with any normal job.

One of the kids was gone at this point, but the other one remained and followed more closely now; his father or grandfather appeared and was trying to convince him to go back with him, but the child seemed insistent in following us and seeing what we were doing. The man apologised for the behaviour, clearly nervous and feeling a bit foolish in some sense. I did not mind him or the kid so much at this point.

Eventually we are on a rooftop part of the old cathedral building. It's high, but not as high as it would have been on top of the actual cathedral; I got the sense that this was a secondary, inner, chapel, built to be inside the cathedral itself. We got on the rooftop simply, because the grassy terrain ramped up to it, I recall. It's all leafy and there's lots of Autumn-coloured leaves on top, a contrast to the green grasses from earlier. I remember stepping on the leaves and feeling them under my boots, which made me more aware of what I was wearing. I remember walking over and maybe stepping on a dead sapling that was growing here. Its wood was dark and bendy.

Somehow it's a truly beautiful area and scene but I don't think or realise this in the dream.

As we get near the opposite end I become concerned and tell everyone to stop. The roof slopes down more quickly ahead and there are no leaves. I start to realise the danger of being on a roof more than before. I tell H, "there are no tiles here, we'll slip right off". So in agreement we start to walk back. I had thoughts of the kid falling and didn't want to feel responsible should something happen, but I also think about how the parent/grandparent would feel should such a thing happen.

At this point my fear of heights seems to kick in a little and I stick more toward the inner edge, where there's a vertical structure jutting out the middle of the roof; I step up on a stone ledge of sorts and as I keep walking back with a tight grip on some stone stuff, I start to realise there had been a music playing for quite some time, in a quick crescendo now. I could hear a jackdaw or crow cawing for the same amount of time too. These sounds were immensely beautiful and as they became more and more vivid I eventually woke up.

Dream Fragment:

Only made brief notes of this one. Dream about visiting a therapist to treat some narcolepsy (that I do not suffer from in real life). I basically kept falling asleep throughout this dream and having different dreams within the dream. In the last part, there was some joint therapy dream thing about recognising that I was asleep, and we had a timed round to shoot enemies and shoot their limbs off with guns.

Then an old skeleton is under some bushes or canopy on some grass. It was Kerrigan's skeleton? The front of the skull was missing or smashed, but some of the lower jaw mandible was intact. Someone took off what was the bones of a tail part of the skeleton and then I or someone else tossed the full skeleton towards someone, Sol, I think? She suddenly had to go though, and we all criticised her for doing this every time.

Scraps:

- A small Spartan-like nation? They had a strong military that seemed American in some sense and they were testing some nuclear weapons and special bullets. It was sunny. Lots of concrete structures.

---

Notes:
- There sure is a lot to make note of here, and I didn't even record all the detail of the first dream fully, it would have taken me too long and most of it is ultimately filler in some sense. But I greatly enjoyed that dream's experience.
- I probably remembered scraps of at least five long dreams in total, but all dreams were fairly vivid. They also all felt like they changed very quickly.

- In a between-period of sleeping and not sleeping after my initial waking up, I tried to focus my mind on drawing but did not have any dreams relating to that or art in general.

- The children following us were both boys, probably between the ages of 6-10. I don't remember having a great look at them, mostly because they followed us from behind most of the time.
- This first dream is the longest dream sequence I have dreamt of for quite a long time now.

- In the second dream, the skeleton was whole, all joined together, something that I know in waking life is impossible except if it had been put together as a museum piece of some kind. The bones were particularly yellowed and somewhat pitted.
- The guns/shooting thing probably came about from playing KF quite a bit with H lately.
- The weapons-testing in the scraps dream likely came about from a general enjoyment of controlled loud noises and explosions (despite their dangers and harmful nature).

- The therapist figure seems to be recurring a little recently. I think it's part is an inner representation of a guide because I have often sought help from therapists for guidance with the psychological side of life and because I've had some good ones, I suppose I feel on some level that they can be very useful guides, even when they say things I'm not happy with or don't agree with.
- This type of figure is also ironically likely to be the antithesis of my frustrations with healthcare systems; these dream therapists actually care about me and there is no payment or any such thing involved, there is a genuine feel of interest in helping me as if they were devoted to that.
- The narcolepsy and the falling asleep thing may have been subconscious cues about dreaming reality.

Let's start from the beginning, I was born in Jan 7, 1999 and I had nightmares and bad dreams when I was really young. Floods and monsters were reoccurring themes. I remember some sleep paralysis that was pretty bad. I was bullied a bit in school in China and that was reflected by the lower dream quality, I think the handful of good dreams were as low as my six star rate overall.

When I moved to US near 2011~2012, I had Fish and Superheroes, my first truly potentially good dream, then I had My Heroine, my first 4/5 dream which I originally rated as 5/5. My first recorded lucid dream seems to be Defeated sister, but the date looks really wrong and I probably randomly assigned it. The true first LD is likely "Too easy, let's go back".

After Nice Meal With Sister, (2013) my best non-lucid dream, I had a year gap with nothing significant, except Table Turn, the first time I had turned around a nightmare, which was from lucidity. The "Great Adventures" hinted at the pattern of awesome dreams that would soon come next.

Within half a year after I watched Sixth Sense, I had a series of excellently unpredictable dreams. The real catalyst was SERENDIPITY, which was so incredible that it took three years to have another dream better than it (not including Enigma and OZ). I attempted WBTB sessions, MILD, dream journaling, etc. resulting in an overall 20% LD rate in that time. After only four months I had OZ&SHIOM, my best dream ever, which has not been beaten for 5 years, as a result of wanting to defeat SERENDIPITY.

After 2015 I was satisfied for the most part and mostly only LD'd a little. Nothing that impressive happened until mid-2016's with the best flying dream ever, SOAR. Within three months I was off to another small streak with DEJA VU, RISING AGAINST, X-Rated, and at a stretch SPORTSFECTION (induced on purpose). I like to nickname this the "silver age". [visualization: https://prnt.sc/tsfs9s]

2017 however was not a great year, I got split up with my crush Abby and I had no awesome dreams for three months in a row. I was therefore extremely goddamned lucky that I had ACTION! ROMANCE! my second favorite dream, in August. It was incredibly ground-breaking and even challenged Oz for its title. The rest of 2017 was relatively uneventful though.

2018 was a weird year. It started off with my worst dream, and one of the best. I still wasn't over the split up, especially since A!R! didn't help, and so that explains why I had "Angry Abby". However, what makes this really unusual is that the very same night I somehow, somehow managed to have A Piano Battle of Fire and Ice. I have a bunch of weaker awesome dreams like IT COULD HAPPEN and THE CONCERT, before one night I watched a comic-based music video and had "Badass Soul Mate", that let me regain a bit of my sense of self (along with 50% lucidity rate across two months).

Sadly, 2019 was/still is the worst year yet. I think the grades pressure got to me. It started off with a very promising True Path to Victory dream relating to my intuition, but nothing else matched it. After "Hidden Falls" I decided irl to go to a boot camp to reset the mindset. In boot camp I ironically still had two awesome dreams which were silly but nice -- dream quality actually went up which was cool.

In 2020, my mind was refreshed, and I built up a mystery involving Virsieras, the dream architect. Then, I had ENIGMA, an incredibly unique dream revolving around finding Easter eggs in past dreams. I had been determined to have at least one awesome dream each month and I've been successful so far. The year is looking good. The dream titled "L" in particular deserves a mention due to its incredibly strong gimmick. Had it not been for Enigma, "L" would've taken the cake for this year.

2021 was sadly not very eventful overall. The first half of the year I got busy with school, outside activities such as DND, internships, etc. however, I had played Genshin Impact extensively and influenced a non lucid dream rivaling the power of Nice Meal —AQUARIUS, an astounding display of flying red fish in space. With the dwindling of dream recall, only Alter Ego and Ingenious Gauntlet kept the awesome dream streak going.

Had a couple of dreams with some lucidity and one true lucid this night despite not using any techniques. My mind was pretty busy due to lots of things to consider, so that's probably the cause...

In a non-lucid dream I was walking along a street with some family members. For some reason I can't remember we (or mostly the others) got into a heated and pointless argument. I got increasingly annoyed and saddened by their behavior but at the same time I also gained more and more lucidity. When I finally reached complete awareness the dream got as immersive and vivid as usual. The emotional aspect of the dream was still there, as unpleasantly intense as before. Now, I realized though that I could indeed change the whole situation. I was overcome by a feeling of almighty power - that I had complete control over every single detail in this moment. I spread my arms to both sides and produced a feeling of peace and love that permeated all of the dream world. It physically manifested as a strong wind that suddenly blew along the street up to the mountains in the distance. As soon as it swept over my family they immediately stopped the bickering and got perfectly calm.

The wind continued to blow and almost made me take off into the air by itself. So, I just spread my arms further and let it lift me up. I admired the city and the surrounding landscape as I flew higher and felt the familiar rush of excitement. Then, I remembered my promise to taste the clouds for my niece, so I went even higher. Things got quite unstable now but I made it to the layer of clouds that is always present when I'm flying lucidly. I used my hands to shove a bit of the light gray mass around me into my mouth. This was easier said than done because the material was pretty elusive and not solid at all. Just in time before waking up I got it to work: the clouds tasted a little bit sweet and also like this artificial fog produced by a fog machine.

4th June

Dream:

Me, H and some other hundred workmen were redoing tiles, mostly on walls, of some cathedral/palace place.

There was a Lord Durnstam, who had a black and gold crown. He was king of the local region. During a break, which had no set time, I wandered the main where most of the workmen were. Many walls had enormous and ornate wooden bookcases and in some vaulted alcoves there were a number of great paintings all sort of a standard size. The themes were mostly random, but pertaining to Durnstam. They were all privately commissioned by him and I wondered who the artist was.

When I started working on the tiles at the start of the dream, the place seemed moodier and poorly lit. There was this contractor next to me, a woman with faded blonde hair which was tied back, though her hair wasn't that long anyway. She had cream colour pants and a white tank top.

I didn't know what to do for whatever reason, or I was confused; so she started sort of poking fun about it but in a playful way. In any case I left this small room and turned around the corner looking for H, finding H immediately.

I asked for help and he sort of rolled his eyes but got up and followed me. We went back to that small room with the lady, who was still there and working. H gave me a bit flat screwdriver to remove the mortar with. I said it wouldn't do, and asked where the electrician's chisel was. H said it would be too vicious but I didn't believe so. In any case, I started to remove mortar. But it wasn't like proper mortar, it was brittle yes, but also sort of soft. Part of me wondered how it was working at all or how it had remained in place undisturbed.

Then the hall scene, while walking around, I was holding the screwdriver or maybe a big steel crowbar. It felt heavy but both not enough and too much to actually be either of those items; I don't remember my clothes.

By the end of the dream I was in some side wing of the place. There were modern windows, big and plain. But the light mood was again poor and dark. The worker woman had followed for some time but H wasn't around anymore, having returned to working elsewhere. Then my old friend Da replaced the woman at some point and he was eating a sandwich, which he then passed me and then I had one of my own. I tried doing work while eating but it wasn't going to do, so I stopped trying to multitask like this and just held his sandwich and ate mine.

Then at some point there was a big black man, sitting somewhere on the other side of the room, by the windows. He got up and started singing as he did. It was Gregory Porter and in the dream I heard the lyrics clearly, but I don't remember them anymore. They were some sort of comment on society as a whole.

Earlier I remember on this side wing hall there were miniscule 1cm tiles all along the wall, making one long continuous mosaic. I thought I'd start on that wall from the bottom and said I was wanting to do these. Some worker walked past and almost laughed. The woman was still with me and pointed out it would be a nightmare to redo because I'd have to do the whole lot once I started. I was confused and up to that point hadn't realised the mosaic was proper tiles, explaining that I thought it was vinyl (lino cover).

---

Notes:
- Although this dream wasn't super vivid, some of the recall was quite detailed. The whole dream was quite long and felt like it took a while.
- In reality there is no such place as Durnstam so there couldn't possibly be a Lord Durnstam.
- The guy that sang like Gregory Porter, I don't remember him looking like the actual person; I remember the dream character as being a bit bigger and more athletic. Curiously enough this seems to relate to something I read only recently about gymnasts and musicians.
- Unfortunately, song and lyrics and generally speaking, harmony and music, tend to be some of the first things I lose memory of on awakening.
- The whole dream probably came about as we had recently been doing some tile-related work in our home.
- I seem to remember the Lord was present in the main hall, but I may have just seen a portrait of him.

1st June

Dream:

I was on a country road with H. We were walking along it when the road curved towards a big estate. There were tall and trimmed hedged along either side of the road. On the right side were some bushes partially under the shade of an oak. The bushes had bright cobalt-blue fruits. On closer inspection they looked like strawberries, in shape.

I took one and ate it and it was sweet. I then told H I wanted to make jam with these cobalt berries and H said we couldn't take many but I started to pick the large berries into my pockets until I couldn't take any more.

Some bit of the dream is missing, or there is a transition.

Then we're inside the big estate place, but it was just like our home with a bigger scale for the rooms. I remember being in the kitchen and it looked regal or something.

Dream Fragment:

In some kind of museum or gallery, there were many objects on display, everything was lit from underneath. I remember there was this wide trunk or stump and I smashed it's side somehow. Its core was crystalline and I pulled out one piece.

It was shaped like an amorphous animal. I suddenly had a long knife, and started carving it to look like a dog. It felt more like wood than crystal.

---

Notes:
- The second dream may have just been a run-on sequence from the first.
- In the first dream, I remember it was sunny and it felt like it was a quiet road. I remember that the cobalt colour of the berries was particularly vivid.
- At the time I think I had started making jam more often, a habit I have kept a bit by now. I like to make jam or jelly out of fruits other people might not consider, so maybe the exotic character of the berries and my desire to turn them into a jam might be interconnected.
- I still have some visual memory of the second dream which allows me to make note that it looked a bit like that place in space odyssey, with the white floors and rooms at the end. It was darker than that because the light was focused on the displays though.
- Looking back on this dream, I quite like the idea of the crystal and of carving it. To me, quite a while now since I had this dream, it feels analogous to some of my inner concepts around transformation and undefined forms, shapeshifting and so on. The carving is significant as a whole because carving and sculpting as a whole are of major interest to me but they aren't activities I've had much chance to work in. On top of that it deals with the subject of controlling matter and changing it.

29th May

Dream Fragment:

I remember little of most of the dream. Just one part stands out.

I was being shown someone's pet or something. It was a cat at first but then it was a hyena. It was on a stand or pedestal of sorts and the animal itself looked elongated compared to what I'd expect.

Then the person showing me the hyena, was telling me something about its urinary system and they put their hand sort of inside the hyena from underneath and pulled out a very large fleshy and desaturated pink sac.

Some explanation was given to me. I didn't feel any disgust and was curious about the anatomy and around this point I realised the hyena looked to be sort of split into three parts but still joined together by some spinning tube thing between each sectioned part. I remember the hyena's head was turned toward us most of the time and was panting. Something about this segment reminds me of having the dog at the vet.

Dream Fragment:

Maybe this was the first dream. Something about H and our friend C. I remember we were at our house, or some version of it. H was concerned about someone breaking into the shed and I reassured H by pointing at a very Sims-like alarm system installed just to the side of the shed door.

I remember it was a dark night but there was a full moon in sight. The ambience looked darker than it should have done considering the full moon and how big/close it appeared to be.

---

Notes:

- The alarm system from the Sims should have been a somewhat obvious dream sign.
- The dream with the hyena, while similar in feel to the experience of having the dog at the vet, was probably just a manifestation of the interest I have in analysing anatomy from a hands-on approach. My lack of disgust or similar feeling is somewhat unusual within the context of automatic reactions, but perhaps is some indication that I could overcome such reactions more easily with training or simply by being exposed to this type of demonstration on a regular basis. I often feel sad that things have to die for us to have a better look at them and this aspect and the fleshy sac both relate directly to how I feel about meat in cooking, at times.
- I believe the rotating tube sections were simply the dream mind's way of justifying the body being split in three sections while the creature was still alive with no pain. In a way it felt a bit like something I might be able to do with a 3D model and perhaps that's part of where this originated too.

24th May

Dream:

Was in some kind of gallery or museum. The room was large and square. It had a lower tier/level kind of, also square and I walked down to it with some stairs. H was there I think and I was supposed to connect some displays of paintings with power, but I only had a single extension lead.

(Some section I don't remember.)

Then, as I was talking to someone a delegation appeared or something and a few others including H got close to the group. There was a mayor of some kind and the museum's curator. My dad was also part of this delegation. He had a dark brown suit and seemed taller and younger. Then he started moving ahead of the group into some hall and the group followed him.

I didn't really want to join this event but H said something to me from behind and said I should go because of dad, giving me a push and then I just continued with the momentum. Then in some other room, dad and this other guy start climbing some nonsensical spiral staircase. It was made with beautifully stained wood and a carved/turned centre pillar, but for some reason only had a bannister/railing on the inner side of the steps. It went very high up, four or five stories.

I was feeling my fear of heights so I didn't look down or backwards and wondered how the hell I was going to get back down.

Because of the missing bannister bit, we were all climbing the staircase by pulling ourselves up on the centre pillar or something. I remembering seeing dad reach the top and jumping to a flat area just under ceiling level and over a wall.

The whole place looked highly decorated and detailed in a neo-classic style, mostly comprising wood or painted wood. Eventually I got to the top too and I wasn't sure about the jump but the point of view changed from my eye sight to an overview of the area and then I jumped.

Then the rest of the dream was in this sort of top down view. I walked around this secluded area and eventually found some portal or something? And then I became like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.

I have no more recall of the dream.

---

Notes:
- Not too long after this dream I started work on a virtual gallery project in which I pretty much wanted to embody this general neo-classic styling and museum feel. Some of this idea of powered displays must have bled through into my subconscious because I did indeed later on create something similar for my project.
- The suit my dad was wearing was in the style of a suit I remember him actually wearing when he was more given to wearing suits anyway because of work.
- In retrospect, H's presence in this dream was a bit "guide-like" I suppose, as H's role was fairly limited in the dream but somewhat essential for the action to unfold as it did.

Grey = awake
Yellow = non-lucid
Blue = lucid

---

There's something to do with Regina from once upon a time and a witch. They want to go somewhere with some circular magical construction in a gigantic warehouse made out of a black material, but they need food. Thus the evil witch decides to bring Henry from the same series as food. Regina of course says no and provides the food they need. Henry still goes with them, though. Suddenly there's a scene change to people going insane and violently throwing themselves onto their children. Suddenly I am one such child and someone sits down on me, and I wake up.

---

That was a weird dream with horrible themes. Not good.

No techniques used, completely random lucid after ~6 hours of sleep.

Had a long non-lucid dream about wandering around town while being late for work. In the end I ended up on a beach and because I felt extremely tired I laid down on the sand. Immediately, I felt a sinking sensation which I associated with WILD so I got somewhat aware already. I relaxed completely and 'awoke' in my bed the next moment. Being pretty sure of having a false awakening I got up and looked around. My surroundings were more vivid than ever; for further testing I precisely inspected some furniture nearby. I couldn't believe how real everthing felt and looked and RCed to confirm my dream state.

Walking over to the window I now saw differences to reality. There was a large window facade and I looked down into a sort of foyer with another wall consisting of glass. Down there was a DC with a bike trying to leave the building through the glass wall but couldn't get through. Thinking to myself that I'll succeed where he failed I passed through the windows (though they seemed solid at first) and slowly floated down. I tried to remember what I had planned to do next in a lucid dream but my memory was largely inaccessible. Only some tasks of the year came to my mind, so I proceeded to fly away from here. Outside I somehow found myself in my parents' garden - but a version from more than ten years ago. Suddenly, flying felt physically exhausting (what kind of nonsense in a dream...) and I woke up.

brief HH of holding keys in my hand. I just remember the keys are from work and i use them to open the compactor room door. However IRL the keys went missing.

I did have a jamie dream but i remember nothing about it.

Vague sense of a longer dream but it eludes me.

I'll have to figure out a better sleep cycle. Working nights 5 days a week really sucks. It's like jail.

Date of Dream: SUN 26 JUL - 2020



Dream No. 697 - Separated Sections

Dream 697 A - Drive Or Stay Home
I don’t remember much about this dream. From where I do remember, my family were planning on going to a holiday to Apollo Bay. My parents were discussing arrangements at the time such as who was going to drive there. It was supposedly going to be a long drive, so I suggested that I drive a portion of the way. I said to asked my mum if I could drive down the portion of the major road that was going to be straight, but my dad wasn’t having any of it.

After I failed to get the message through to my dad, my mum tried explaining to him. He kept insisting though that I wasn’t allowed to drive and he said it in a mean and somewhat aggressive way. Though by now, I wanted my way and since my dad kept resisting, I snapped and said that I wasn’t going to go on the holiday with them at all and that I was going to stay home. The dream ended as I walked into the house to begin my home-stay and my parents and brother were getting ready to leave.

Dream 697 B - Kairi's Light
The dream started with me wondering around in my old house. A middle aged Asian lady approached me and brought my attention to some sort of video that Kairi had made to supposedly teach others about her light and its powers. As she suggested for me to watch it, I went over to the sitting room and sat on the couch as the lady set up the video and darkened the room. The rest of the dream was now a sub-scene, which was the actual video, the dream camera now actually immersing me in it rather than playing from the sitting room.

The scene showed Kairi in The Final World and both Sora and Riku were also there with her; all in their KH3 appearances. Also, as the entire scene played, Kairi’s theme was running in the background. Kairi was saying something, insinuating that she used to have different powers but that she chose her current light powers for a reason. She then went to the group. Although they were standing equally apart from each other, it’s like the dream gave the illusion of Sora being in the middle and Riku was off to the side.

And then the dream camera went to a close up of Sora, though I can’t exactly explain what he was doing persay, I think he ended up looking at me, studying me, but I’m not sure. But then the dream panned out again and that’s when Kairi was seen to close her eyes and then peacefully ascend somewhat, with when she was at the highest, she was glowing with all this light. When she descended again, she walked back over to the dream camera again to supposedly communicate with me. She did say more but I forgot what it was that she said. The dream ended after this.



Dream 697 A
Dream Guide: None
Lucid?: No

Dream 697 B
Dream Guide: None
Lucid?: No



This is the second time I have successfully completed a task for a 'dream project' that I have set. I thought since Riku is my current dream guide, and he's from Kingdom Hearts which is a world that seems to have laws of its own, I thought I'd do something to give back to him for helping me pass all my university subjects as well as all the other times he's helped me in-dream. I thought that since the last KH game, Sora has gone missing; so the dream project that I have set is for me to incubate dreams where I may get fictional leads on Sora. The dreams form the 'assignment' component, and then in waking life, I'm going to write an imaginary report on my dream findings which forms the 'exam' component.

For the assignment component, I set six compulsory tasks and one optional task to carry out in dream. The tasks are as follows:
Task 1 - Have Riku take me to Shibuya so I can gauge the area that Sora has to survive in until IRL canon rescue via whatever game they make next.
Task 2 - Conduct a supervised audit on Yozora. 'Supervised audit' meaning that Riku has to be accessible for assistance if Yozora gets bad in the dream.
Task 3 - Get Riku's perspective on his connection with Sora.
Task 4 - Pull Sora for a one-time 1-on-1 meeting with me so I can get his perspective on any matters.
Task 5 - Explore the Destiny Islands to get some leads on Sora's homeworld or something about he himself. Riku can take me or I can go independently.
Task 6 - Conduct an independent audit on Organisation XIII. 'Independent audit' meaning I don't need a dream guide in attendence.
Task 7 (optional) - Get Kairi's perspective on her connection with Sora.

Once again, Task 7 was optional, meaning I wasn't attempting to incubate it in real life, but could execute it if I stumbled upon it in a dream, which is what happened last night (this morning actually; the sun was up when I woke up and fell back asleep).

So far I have completed Task 5 (Dream 693 C) and Task 7 (Dream 697 B). I still have 5 tasks (1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) to go before I write up the paper which I have given myself the imaginary rule of two days to write 'till it's due. The two days will be set once all 7 tasks have been completed.

Lastly, although Riku was in the scene, I have not declared him as a dream guide here, because this felt like it was Kairi's spotlight and Riku was such an insignificant part of it, so much so that he didn't even shudder or speak.

21st May

Bits from one or two dreams? Didn't make notes in the morning, was too tired.

Dream Fragment:

I was in a desert or barren canyon type of place. I was driving some kind of motorbike, called the "MotorBeast" or something to that effect. I remember accelerating with my right hand and making note of the extremely loud roar from the exhaust. I did some acrobatics or was in some high speed sequence?

Next thing I remember, different place, but related in some way. There was a dream character, he was simultaneously my teacher and an avatar of Anubis. But we had to fight and so he was like a boss of some sort. I remember chasing him through this dark and ancient Egyptian temple/crypt place. There was a dark red tint to everything and even though daylight broke through the ceiling in certain parts, it was still dark, like the exposure made dark places appear brighter but bright places appear much darker.

I remember the character taunted me from behind a half wall and pillars. I couldn't reach him but shot him with a Torgue grenade launcher set to sticky mode. I remember the feeling of holding the weapon with only my right hand and the feeling of pointing it. It felt intuitive, but in retrospect it seemed far too light for what it was. After emptying my clip, the explosives went off in sequence, causing him heavy damage. He was nearly dead (I knew through some interface display?) but he was able to run very fast through a narrow hall crowded with unknown dream characters, which were his minions. I believe they looked like mummies.

Eventually I caught up to him, finding him in a small room around a corner, where he was using some kind of self-bandaging ability (like in WoW). I tried shooting him to interrupt it, but I think something happened right after I did that, and the dream ended.

---

Notes:
- The bit where the Anubis character ran away at high speed when on low health now reminds me that some boss in Killing Floor did something similar.
- The Torgue weapon was notable because I'd recently been playing BL3 and I always loved the Torgue shotguns in BL2; it should have been a somewhat obvious dream-sign here since it was somewhat out of place in the rest of the dream's context.
- Though I didn't think of this at the time of this dream, I now feel as though there is a bit of a link between the motorbike and the Torgue gun since those guns are typically modelled after big engines and the like. The dream felt more randomly put together at the time but I feel like I could unpick it better now in terms of contextual/schematic associations.