Coinception

This morning's dream was quite detailed, and although part of the dream after the first one has been blocked out, many scenes still remain intact. A few scenes become slightly graphic

There was a man lying on the ground. The room was dark, with scenes of red curtains, and possibly tables and gold-framed portraits strewn throughout. Suddenly, another man walks in and starts shooting pistol rounds at him. I counted about 20 rounds, or more than 100 shots fired. The pretext for this terrible scene, I do not remember.

Time to report this massacre to someone close-by. Number of killed: 1. Could that really aptly describe the horror to the full extent?

West Java, Indonesia

Somewhere, a strong earthquake jolted the region, affecting a rural area outside the city of Jakarta. There was a volcanic eruption that turned the sky red around the world. Somewhere, possibly in Japan, another volcanic eruption changed the character of the sky.

One tribe in Java offended another. For some reason, a war began, and tanks started rolling into the fields. Many were killed, and women and children were seen hiding in their tents, as bombs exploded around them. The facade said this was Kota Kinabalu. But that's in Malaysia, on the island of Borneo.

What did they even fight over?

Soon, a ceasefire was declared, as the tribes came to terms with the conflict. Nobody made a move for days, then days turned into weeks, and weeks months. A pile of dust still lay unforbidden.

China, 1989

There was some Western company being sent in, a camera attached to the back of a fruit fly, to send into the nasal passages of a person. Inside, there were a series of rooms, four floors, and a conference meeting in one. Not much going on anywhere, but suddenly a stampede of people rushed toward the pool. A British filmmaker joined me. The crazy woman, as she was called, Caucasian and dark brown hair, swam all the way to the opposite shore at an impossible speed, and took a basket, filling it quickly with water. It formed a Canada goose shape, which then rose on top the water in the form of a bubble, which burst, and people laughed.

I highly recommend this book, I wrote. It brings an air of humanity fo 1980's and 90's Asia, including the events in Indonesia and Tiananmen Square, even to the police and soldiers who instigated the massacre in various places.

I woke up for the second time now, this time about 40 minutes before I had set my alarm to ring. Perhaps this was because I had a lot of work.

This dream occurred just this morning. I'll only remember certain parts of it, and as for the other past dreams, I will post some of those shortly too.

We were on a trip to another school. Walking into the hallways, I thought about, or perhaps discussed, how science accepts some concepts while ignoring others. If religion wants to ignore gravity, thought someone, wouldn't that make their belief still true because they have faith?

Actually, I thought. We only perceive something as real if it is separate from the rest. What about the theory of changing gravitational constant over eons - also similar to the Variable Speed of Light Hypothesis - why does science ignore that? Why is evolution accepted but not the evolution of gravity? What about the reports of spiritual experiences? What was objective and what was qualia?

There was some kind of Super-ego theory, too.

Somewhere hours later, there was a thunderstorm. I woke up in my old bedroom, talking with my "biological mother", who supposedly was different from my mom in real life. It was 12:23 pm, time to get up.

We went on another tour of a school, sometime later in the day at 7:50 am, as the buses were leaving early. We walked inside with a bunch of high school students, me reflecting on the "dreams" I'd just had, writing them down in my all-purpose notebook.

A female friend of mine gave me a piece of cake on a plate. I tried cutting it a few times, but it was silicone, and seemed to disappear a little each time I cut it. I promised to get the cake repaired, but said, "this would be appetizing if it weren't silicone".

I woke up. It was 8:41 am. The previous day, I'd indeed talked to this female friend about shellac, and how it was secreted from the female lac bug, even in candy.

This dream occurred to me this morning. As you can tell, my mind is consumed with university-related themes right now. I will post the remaining journals from February to June sometime later.

Here I was, at the University of Waterloo's Student Life 101. In a group of a few students, many of whom I didn't know, we walked inside this building and took some pamphlets.

The room was somewhat cozy and old-fashioned - perhaps it was the residence building on campus? We packed our stuff and headed down the hallways, me remembering my toiletries. By the Sun angle and time of day, I was walking east.

As I entered the bathroom, I was reading the pamphlet, describing a student's experience at the university.

A female student wrote inside: "I enjoy fam sessions and walkout sessions".

Instantly, I was taken in my mind to a scene where the pine trees stand tall in Saskatchewan, yet the grassy fields were all over. A thought popped into my head: "the difference between boys and men when they have a problem, is that boys ignore it, and men ask what they can do to fix it".

Perhaps it wasn't that concise. Either way, I thought: Replace the F with a J and then we're talking. *Revolution!*

There was much anticipation on either end, and some towels were possibly in the room. I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and went to check the website to find info on an English Proficiency Exam, including bloopers.

It's been four months since I last posted. Everything's been busy lately but this morning's dream (June 9) was vivid enough that it pushed me to post now.

Usually when I have a dream, I'd write it down and hopefully remember enough details to post when the time comes. Much has changed over the last few months. Often the dream would reflect something that goes on in real life, either before or after the dream takes place.

I still have recollections of 1/3 of my dreams, but about 2/3 are just paper notes now and I have no recall of them. Yet I'll be posting as much as I can, and hopefully in a few weeks the flashbacks to past dreams will join up with current dreams again.

Before we continue, I should explain what I mean in my use of the word "facade": basically, it's a word, another memory or previous dream, or a false recollection that triggers faint memories of the actual dream as they slip away. Sometimes the memories fade within 10 seconds of waking up.

You have to be careful sometimes - often the blog will log you out while you're trying to do a journal, and even today I had to change my password, after a Russian hacking incident months ago here.

It's a real challenge to get this thing started. Let's begin at this morning's dream, when I fell asleep on my sofa around 12:30 am.


I'm in a room somewhere. There are these orange vitamin B-12 pills in my hand, and it looks like there are several dozen of them. Should I put these in my mouth, or moreover report just what happened?

A tropical weather website comes up, dicussing a low pressure system that was bound to give us a big heat wave in the early part. Not much else was going on, except for that jet stream.

I'm sitting somewhere with an old student-teacher friend of mine, who talked about her memory of living in northeastern Ontario, where there are now some wildfires. Not sure if I ever join in on this conversation.

Hearing some words being said now, remembering a few.

"So when I was up at Algoma University, the weather would really stay pretty much the same. One day, it would be 7C. The next day, 7C and the same the day after that."

"It would take 35 minutes to drive up to Timmins, and 65 minutes when there was a big snowstorm and the traffic got heavy".

Wait a minute, I thought, looking over at a map. Wouldn't that mean North Bay takes only 25 or 30 minutes? I live in the Greater Toronto Area at this time.

Funny thing is, my friend never even went to Algoma. She went to U of T.

Now, I'm remembering something about a conversation I had with the principal, or maybe I was having one. I wasn't in trouble or anything; in fact my principal thinks of me as someone who is more mature and responsible than most.

There's a lot I didn't get to say to her, though.

I wake up with this strange pain in my left leg. Had I been bitten by a spider while I took my midnight nap? It seemed like I'd been asleep for maybe one or two hours, but as I look at my radio clock, it's 3:50 a.m. Without even going to brush my teeth, I return to my room, turn off my computer, and go to sleep. I consider taking my chemical experiment into my room before it gets stolen, but leave it there and doze off anyway.

There were these "fake vegetable" pills in a jar, that had both the shape and the taste of real vegetables: carrots, peppers and broccoli, at least two of the above three. Should I eat them?

I was asked whether I wanted an ionizing treatment, producing an isotope on my body that might have been radioactive. The isotope had an atomic mass of 188.

Of course that's going to be radioactive, I thought, when I woke up much later. Yet doing a bit of research, it turns out the element is probably non-radioactive osmium-188, which is naturally more dense than lead, and maybe a few traces of radioactive iridium-188.

Sitting there, I'm looking at a screen off the wall of my classroom, where my geography teacher was giving a lesson using a weather website that I routinely used. Next, we pointed out a small earthquake that had occurred a few days before off the northwestern coast of Ireland.

"Belfast!", I exclaimed, literally shouting it out loud. Yet Belfast was in North(east)ern Ireland, and whether I knew this at the time, I'm not sure.

The alarm woke me up again. It was just after 6 a.m., but I'd forgotten to turn off the alarm the previous night. I might wake up once more during the next bit, but whether this is recorded is unclear. Still have some assignments overdue for my geography teacher. The next part becomes rather academic.

I'm swimming in a lake somewhere, and the water is very tolerable. Whether it's more like a pond or there's a castle in the distance, I do not know, but I keep thinking it's Elsinore, the Danish city on the extreme eastern big island where the Shakespearean play Hamlet is set.

Some time is needed to practice my recipe. I had made bread before, but this was something quite different.

I have to finish another assignment, I think for the same geography teacher, involving a sled or a toboggan, that would be tested on the snow. Yet the snow had all but melted, and the assignment was overdue. How was I to finish it, then?

It's morning, and I'm on a trail with some of my friends. We'd all be university-bound next year, and to my left we see this grassy knoll that has a barn-like house positioned on top. A horse-drawn carriage was nearby, and I get the feeling that I'd seen this place before, but cannot remember where. Maybe I had been there. From where the Sun was positioned, we were walking southwest. There were some people on or near the carriage in costumes, the woman wearing some kind of shroud over her head, the whole family looking agrarian and traditional.

"Mennonites", I said.

"Yes", one of my friends continued, but...

But what? We continued walking. Over to our right, we come across this forested ravine, that has a steep drop-off soil cliff face with some tree roots. One of us, I or a friend, tries to climb down, but seeing it was so steep and there were granitic rocks underneath, we give up. We continue walking.

We were on a university campus now. I didn't know they had these types of trails here; maybe we don't.

I had debated whether or not to include the names of specific towns or universities I dreamt about. After much thought, I'm deciding to mention these places by name, and will do so in most cases for journals of past dreams.

On our right, it was the University of Guelph campus. There were still some tree branches as we approached the clearning. But I knew that none of us would be going here this year in September.

Johnston Hall.

Some say it's the most well-known landmark. Yet the rock climb had been difficult, and sometime later or earlier, I'm doing an exam for one of my classes.

It's my philosophy teacher, and this time I'm struggling to do well in this second-semester class I'm taking. I had gotten 95% in the first class, but was struggling to maintain 83% in this one. Whatever it was, I knew I needed to do well on the exam.

The room was beige, the desks far apart, the lighting dim yet incandescent. It somehow reminded me of my old elementary school. What in the world was I doing here?

I wake up this time, and it's past 10 am. Time to get up; it was a weekend morning.

OK, I know I haven't posted in ages. Yet some powerful recollections have been contained in the past dreams, and many of them go back to February. When I only have figments of dreams, then maybe I'll post as many as five in one entry, which gives overall a clearer picture of whatever that may be.

The memories may be hazy, but the dreams provide a glimpse.