DarkestDarkness

A few dreams though I only remember bits of them.

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Dream Fragment:

I remember being in a somewhat dark room and having a discussion with some people about age, in the dream I was around an age when my hair would start greying, starting at the front and just lightly. Mom was there and she commented on how it was just like her dad's hair. I remembered a photo of him that mom has kept in her home office for years since his passing. Then I remember seeing a mirror and seeing myself on it. I looked older but unimaginatively so, but my hair did look a lot like his, except for the fact that his would have curled slightly.

Dream Fragment:

Perhaps from another segment of the previous dream, but I remember something about trains and a kind of alien (Mars-like?) desert. Day time, clear sky. There were some really high-tech-looking trains and one such train went up a hill into a rounded futuristic building. I was with a group of people (friends?) and we were walking in the opposite direction, though I kept looking. The engine carriage separated and sort of shot off on its own along the rails and quickly hit an end-track bit, bouncing back and then hitting the rest of the carriages. It was some type of freight train, and its ornamental features matched that of the building, featuring a warm orange.

Dream Fragment:

Something about me or captain Picard, in a large office room of some kind. Other people both friendly and not-so-friendly were there, and we were there to ask for money I think. Starting at 30,000 but then the guy didn't want to give us any more, so then there was this little scene where Picard walked closer to him slowly and then started punching him very fast until the guy, who was also kind of old, fell down on a spiral staircase. He didn't go all the way down or anything, just a couple of steps on his back, because the degree between each step was very small (less than half foot?).

The staircase steps were marble and the handrail looked fancy, but I don't remember it in detail. I remember a woman speaking after this had happened and she said "well, now you have 25,000, since you have to take away 5,000 just for that". But then before the dream ended there was something about a million, I don't remember.

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Notes:
- Recently in waking life I'd been thinking about how I don't really ever remember seeing mirrors in my dreams, so I think that's partly what brought on one's appearance in the first fragment.
- Typically, despite being the result of a previous conscious thought during wakefulness, I did not realise the connection between the two things in the dream. This is happening quite a bit lately, which is frustrating at times. But it may just be that my recall is also decent lately, so maybe I just think I notice it happening more but it may just always happen this frequently and I haven't realised before.
- Featuring myself as being older may also come as the result of conscious thought from waking life, as I often question why I'm always my current age in dreams. Although in the dream, until the hair thing was made obvious by the mirror, I did just feel like my current age anyway.
- In the train dream, the group that was with me was a bit shocked with the collision, but I had been expecting it. The dream had a slight Borderlands feel to it.
- There was a fourth dream fragment also involving trains but in a completely different context. I can't put the visuals into words now.
- The dream with Picard may have just been some continuation of the first fragment. I'm really not sure anymore if these dreams were directly linked or not, because I don't remember any transitions and I had several awakenings this morning.

A particularly long dream. I had other dreams from earlier awakenings, but again I did not make any notes because of how tired I felt, it felt like too much effort. The other dreams weren't as vivid as the long one anyway.

Edit: Self-memo: The original dream notes for this dream are not as extensive because I stopped writing them when I started writing this DJ entry to try and get as much detail from the lingering dream memories.

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Dream:

Starting from the end back; when I was woken up by H placing their hand on my head and speaking to me in waking life, I was walking with some determination towards a parked yellow car in the distance, at an earlier location that was prominent in several parts of the dream earlier; beside the car were shows, yellow too and this was important to me in the dream for some reason. On waking up I had a slight annoyance that I couldn't get to them now that I was awake, but this lingering feeling passed quickly.

This place was a distorted version of the area immediately outside my old home. It was day time, early morning with beautiful sunlight and the cul-de-sac was three or four times longer than it should be, somewhat wider too but not half as much as that. The whole area also sloped up gently on the more distorted side (the side that I never had much reason to be in). There was a zig-zag of pavement with cars parked along it, many of which were red or yellow, many being a mix of the two, like a VW type van which was mostly red but had a yellow boot door.

I had just been at a door to a shop of some kind? I was with Ni and a kid from my childhood, but I don't remember exactly who it was, possibly P, short dark hair, spiky? At this door, Ni asked if my shoes could be painted yellow there and some voice or something decided "no". At this point in the dream or earlier I remember looking down and seeing I had some sort of fabric shoes, like those that we often used for indoor gym classes in my childhood. The shoes were white, as they would be, but for some reason, I had yellow sweat pants, the same tone of yellow as every other yellow that had shown up so far in other dream elements. I remember thinking the white and yellow matched fine, but for some reason this wasn't enough to stop me from wanting the shoes to be yellow too.

Before we got to the shop and we were walking "up" the cul-de-sac, there was a more normal layout. There was a truck double-parking behind some cars, all too common, but it supposedly had dye or paint of the colour I wanted but it had been at this point that Ni and the other one appeared and "guided" me toward the door. I was a bit disappointed because I was sure the truck's paint would be fine, though after they appeared I got the impression maybe I was going to be stealing from the truck or something.

Up to this point I had been running around and faffing about on the more prominent dream location immediately in front of my old building. It was like a room but not. There were sofas and other things typical of a living room I think, but there was this big group of kids, mostly teen girls and some teen boys. I was annoyed with them because of what they'd done before, and because they were being passive-aggressive to me now too. I was looking incessantly for a laptop that I knew I had left on a table in the middle of these sofas, but these teens had moved everything since I had last been here in the dream, everything was covered in their stuff; bags, coats, etc. I remember looking through many laptop-bag like bags but it wasn't in any of them. I even looked in a bag that had a multi-bag tag* to it. After looking in that bag I remember something about a text command which may have been why I couldn't find it, but at that point I got distracted by someone and then the whole yellow shoes thing began.

Before that, I remember going through a wide hall, the exit for which was on the wall of the building and lead to that sofa area. The hall was dark, with an impression of night time to it despite being indoors. There were two of these teen girls doing some kind of work out on some bars on the ceiling, practically twisting themselves around the bars in some kind of pull-up exercise. They looked at me with mocking faces, I was very annoyed with them at this point already.

Before that part, I remember being in a forest on the other side of this hallway-tunnel. I think I was heading toward it when I had tripped and the group of teens, who I was walking together with, started to kick me. The girls were especially mean, kicking me very hard and then when it was over I remember feeling like it was all going to bruise. I felt angry that they abused me as a group and I could see some sort of interface thing that showed me their avatars, their nicknames and how many times each of them kicked me. I told myself I was going to keep this to report them and to show at a hospital when I got there for treatment. At this point I was convinced I was going to go to a hospital, as soon as I could, because I was afraid of massive bruising over my body, especially my face and head. Maybe I was concerned about internal bleeding too or something. Although in the dream I don't remember pain as I would from waking life, I still had a dream perception of having been extensively hurt.

Before this, I remember a fairly peaceful forest, day time, possibly afternoon judging by the yellowed colour of the light. It was a specific type of pine forest typical of my native country, the ground was dry I seem to remember, despite a number of ferns here and there or grass. There had been something about socks and the laptop at this early point of the dream but unfortunately I'm having difficulty recalling anything else; I have the feeling there was a transition of scene before this that put me in that forest, but I can't remember details before it.

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Notes:
- When I was 8-10 is when I knew Ni and potentially some of these teens.
- I remember at that age there was someone I knew from school who had some gold nike shoes or something. I remember liking the shoes, especially because of the gold colour, as I've always been partial to gold.
- The main reason I can think of for the antagonism in the dream is because at school I had a very difficult time getting any of the girls from my classes to like me, even when I was being nice it'd often be the case that I was ridiculed, something that I think was partly driven by boys that these girls did like.
- In the dream I think the yellow shoes thing was something about making a point.
- Although the dream heavily featured things from my teen life (11-17 mostly), I didn't have the perception of being any younger than I am now; I think a lot of these types of situations in dreams for me are always with me being my current age because I don't particularly feel any different now than I did from 5, 10, 20 years ago, aside from my pain problems.
- More of a passing thought: At school I was almost always the youngest in a class, or amongst the youngest. In my family I am the youngest too, and interestingly Ni (who basically tried helping me in the dream) is one of the younger ones in his family, too.
- The contents of the bag that had the "multi-bag" tag were "quantic" and could be accessed from other bags too, a feature I've often used in modded Minecraft, incidentally a game I started playing in my late teens before it was even popular or had such extensive modding.

Dreams for the mornings of 26th, 27th and 31st of March. 26th and 27th enclosed in spoiler to reduce general length of the DJ entry.

The last few days I have had decent dream recall from morning awakenings but I have felt too tired to make initial notes for them (28th,29th,30th). Sleep has been unusual for this past week, keep getting up too late despite several normal awakening times but might be starting to improve again.

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26th:

Spoiler for 26th content:

Dream Fragment:

One of the earliest dreams I remember, it was quite a vivid dream but I didn't make note of it until a later awakening so details were lost. Basically a giant/anthropomorphic sex scene of some sort? (Self-memo; see original note for a few more details)

Dream:

On a planet covered in cities but also wide ravines with lava at the bottom. The buildings weren't very tall (no more than twenty stories each) and some were on the edges of these lava ravines. I remember grappling between the buildings at high speed with some Oort grapples? It was like a game and another player saw me and followed me along with their own grapples, which annoyed me initially. From the building tops I could see a sunset to the right and a coastal area. Opposite to that, on the left, was more city but in smaller density and no lava ravines; it was also progressively darker/duskier the more I saw toward the left. I headed in that general direction with the grapples.

Transition of some kind possibly.

A mix of McGee and a high school friend. He was flying with a jet pack and I was flying with a massive and single jet engine that I had strapped on my back or something. But it was too heavy so I kept touching the ground instead of simply flying up/forward, which made the momentum sort of reset.

We were flying or racing along some roads, there were trees either side of the roads and the trees made a sort of canopy over the road. I remember moonlight coming through the leaves.

27th:

Spoiler for 27th content:

Poor recall, woke up unable to focus. There were other dreams from 7AM onwards but I didn't recall enough details to go into any of them as I made my initial notes.

Dream:

This was the last dream, which took place in a town. It was a bit busy and I was with someone, possibly H. We'd just been at a detached/semi-detached house? and we were going to cross the street. I remember it was day time but possibly near the end of the day. A purple van driven by a woman was backing up and parking on the driveway to the right of the one from the house we'd just left.

Her van was supposed to have some vynil stickers on the side (auto-intuitive dream knowledge) but for some reason it had an error message of some kind, which in the dream I briefly realised wasn't supposed to be the case. The street was quite wide, like six lanes wide, three going either way. The road was on a slope and the incline increased quickly after a certain point going down, around where it also cornered.

We watched for traffic and crossed the street, then walking up the street on the other side. This side had no driveways whatsoever; it instead had a tall building, of which I only remember the wall, with no windows (understood it to be the side of the building). The wall was cream coloured, typical of my native area. At the top of the road, where it met a perpendicular road, forming a T junction, it looked extremely complicated and traffic along the perpendicular street was very busy. I remember we crossed to a little pavement island in the middle of the junction. For whatever reason, some people I knew from early years of school (8-10 years of age?) were there. I spoke to one of them about electrical power and I suggested putting a generator here.

Then an interface overlay appeared and I could see "slots" on the pavement islands that could have had houses built there, so that was why I was suggesting the generator, instead of the houses apparently. In the interface I got the feel that the generator would be placed underground, beneath the road, should it come into existence. The dream ended soon after.

31st:

I had some sort of pre-sleep half-dream. I was starting to "paint" with just my mind (telekinetically) and was having ideas for a new painting and what I might paint next in my art room.

Dream:

I was in Sweden. I was with one or both of my Swedish friends and we were in their metro system. The stations were tall and spacious, but what really caught my attention was the shapes of the architectural structure. A lot of long and abstract shapes (just the kind of thing I'd like to build with concrete) and all of the stations we went through were mostly concrete, which I think my friends disliked. I think I liked it despite the lack of colour just because of the shapes.

The stations were very well lit and quite busy. I remember we went through one station on the train and there were small island platforms with crossings between them that went down on the rail level, which seemed to imply a high degree of self-responsibility from people.

Another part of the dream or a different dream, I was trying to get to or from university?

Dream Fragment:

Something like the cities game I've played recently, but mixed with actually travelling through the city. I was trying to manage some sort of power dams, three of them to be exact, and they were using water from a mountain like a custom map I made in WL that had a dormant volcano lake.

There were some flow issues eventually, especially because the water was getting completely drained by the dams and this disrupted where it wanted to flow; the water from the source started making its own way in opposite directions and this annoyed me.

Dream Fragment:

In some kind of office. I remember the typical fake ceiling and light fittings. It must have been afternoon; there was a nice and golden light coming in through blinds that covered the windows. The dream focus was on two characters. A stereotypical "madame" and her butler. She wanted to check if she had won some prize with this organisation which did travel tours as rewards? She was obviously naive with her direct interactions with people and the world. Someone representing the organisation felt a bit odd and sinister.

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Notes:
- The pre-sleep state was interesting because it was like what I used to get as a child, just not as strong. It came on very subtly and on its own.
- That state's content was a conscious decision, because I quickly understood that I was more creatively receptive at this stage compared to normal thought, just a shame I didn't interrupt it to make any notes about the painting ideas.
- I was a bit disappointed to not have made notes about the sex dream right after it had happened. In the last few days during the first morning awakenings I have dreams with great recall and think to myself of short word descriptions for the dreams so that I can remember them even if I fall asleep but this technique hasn't worked very much so in conclusion I really need to just write down dreams as soon as I can if I'm likely to fall asleep again.

Some non-lucid stuff that I can remember from this morning. Only made note of the first dream in my initial morning notes.

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Dream:

I was with dad, I think at a mall. It was like the one close to home but it was different somehow, though I had the same sense of familiarity. We were walking through the large and bright halls and as we turned around a corner we stopped, because I spotted this shop that sold ice cream and other stuff, like some pastries typical of my country and cotton candy. I wanted some of these deep fried things they had, even though I didn't feel all that hungry. I think it was just because it's been so long I had any. Not sure what dad wanted, but ice cream I think.

We approached the counter and two other people were being served. There were two guys behind the counter too, so I thought one of them was available and I pointed at something and asked about it. Before there was any reply, dad said "let the other people get served first" but for some reason, in the dream's context I had the ability to snap my fingers to toggle how busy the dream location was. Doing this had a completely intuitive feel. I did snap my right hand's fingers and the people being served simply disappeared, as did many other people walking by around us.

Now I asked about the food thing again. He explained they were long deep fried "waffles". Some were flavoured banana, strawberry or vanilla, with the possibility of a crusty looking chocolate topping, although I think it was more like icing.

I asked for one of the vanilla waffle things. While I was being handed my waffle and then tasting it, I think dad was getting something for himself. The taste was somewhat overly sweet, and bland at the same time (dream characteristic which didn't phase me), but it didn't taste of vanilla very much at all. My problem with the taste however, was the texture, as I was expecting something nice and crunchy, but it was completely soft. I felt disappointed and the few bites I took made me feel full really quickly anyway. I don't remember what I did with it and I don't remember either of us paying.

Then we continued walking through the mall, but into a different section which wasn't as open or light. In fact it felt pretty dark despite there being lights on. We walked into a supermarket inside the mall and I remember wandering around looking for something, but I don't remember what anymore. Eventually, empty-handed I went to the checkout area. I'm not sure it was dad that was with me anymore at this point.

But at the checkout there was a couple, they were buying a desktop computer oddly enough and they wanted help from an attendant because the computer "weighs 24kg and we can't carry it", I thought to myself that despite my weakness, this couple was just being pathetic or lazy. I did think about the effort of carrying it all the way to their car in the parking sub-levels, but I also thought it wasn't really fair to ask the attendant to do that.

Then the man from the couple started being weird, handling the computer case with relative ease he swung it around and it hit the checkout counter, on which I was sat. For some reason I was just sat there and observing. As he did hit the counter with the case, the attendant didn't even flinch like she hadn't noticed. He did it again a few times, harder this time. Now the case was visibly damaged and warped. At first the damage seemed passable, but for whatever reason I was able to look inside; I quickly told them that the circuit boards were cracked because of the metal plates pushing in and that it was no good now. The man started being upset and demanding compensation or something. Again I didn't think this was fair and either I said or thought "you break it, you buy it". The attendant seemed to be handling it though, but it made me feel no respect for this man.

There was a transition then. I don't remember where I was now, but I had some kind of interface. I could select worlds or something?

Then I remember a cutscene of some kind, it was in space. I could see several planets in a star system, and before it happened I knew the star was about to explode, and it did, in a green supernova, the planets burning away in a green flame of sorts. Strangely enough in the dream it was like I already knew about this cutscene (but it's the first time I've seen/dreamt it) so I was using some camera control tools or something to see the scene from different angles than it would normally play through.

I don't remember much else from this dream other than some vague memories of night sky and stars.

Dream Fragment:

At my old home, in my old room. I think what brought this dream on was some thoughts I had before bed about how my old room's balcony has never felt safe, and how I always fear mom may slip some day, or that I may somehow feel compelled to jump out of it (in madness or some other irrational state).

It was a sort of night time, a twilight of some kind. I walked into the room a bit further and saw my sibling T in the balcony. He had a top on but was otherwise naked, this was odd and bothered me on some level but I ignored it and we talked about something. From the balcony, below, I could see my other sibling was arriving with S in a white smart car. Then the doorbell rang and I walked out of the room and went to answer it, I already knew it was going to be L and S but I still picked up the intercomm set and asked who it was. I felt like I was being like dad for doing this (even though I don't remember dad ever doing this type of thing). L replied at first and I asked "who?" because I couldn't understand, then S spoke and her voice made it clear who they were and I pressed the button to open the building door.

Dream Fragment:

Driving, or being driven? With H. Not sure what car, but the landscape and town was a mix of my native home areas and some other places. I enjoyed the view of the nearby mountains in the dream. I remember we went over a bridge or two and there were two towns next to each other. It was day time, but sort of dark despite everything looking bright? Like I was seeing everything through heavily tinted glass, but I don't think the car's glass was tinted at all.

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Notes:
- Last night as I had the thoughts about my old room and the balcony, I did think that it might cause me to have a dream about it. It's a shame I didn't take the opportunity to think about becoming lucid should it happen, as there were plenty of cues in that dream that could have resulted in some state of lucidity, but didn't. Keeping intention of noticing dream signs seems particularly poor for me, but I really think my sleep quality doesn't help.
- The thing with the dream-controlling finger snapping is typical of something my dad does in his non-lucid dreams too, so either that knowledge has created some kind of bias on me, or it's a trait that can be developed because of our personalities, or perhaps simply hereditary somehow. A point of note about it is that I play games a lot where "control" comes easily, so it may simply be a reflection of how there's a lot of self-agency in that type of context.
- The pastry type thing I wanted from the shop was more like a churro or something, but the thing I was given didn't really look like one. I actually remember they had some churro looking things locked up in a clear plastic chest that was hung on a wall on the customer side of the counter. I remember feeling like asking about it but like it would be too much bother to get one.

One fairly long dream at least, though I had others this was the most prominent on my mind after waking up and even so I didn't make note of all of it.

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Dream:

A sequence about Diablo 3. There was a new expansion for the game or something and they were finally continuing the prime evil storyline but the plot was still kind of convoluted and somehow involved time travel to go back to the time of creation of the evils. But then this angel said (to me and other characters?) that we'd have to go even further back than that. Passing thoughts about the creation of time.

I remember having an interface like in the game and quickly found out that something that had been changed was that you could now make any ability/rune combination use any element, as well as some other bonus I don't remember. Just shortly after changing some abilities, while I was looking through these things I think, a treasure goblin appeared and I chased after him. I was going to try using cleave and rend again (I typically always use weapon throw especially because of enemies like the goblins) but the goblin run just fast enough that small mistakes made me not able to catch up to him. At that moment I was immediately regretting having cleave as my primary ability instead of weapon throw.

Eventually he stopped to do one of his little scripted "look-around" animations and I caught up, quickly getting his health down to 1. This annoyed me because he was technically dead but the animation had to finish for him to properly die.

Then I swapped my abilities back and this time I was going to have weapon throw again but with a bleeding effect (literal in the dream but just general DoT) and with poison elemental damage. But I realised I wasn't sure what my most boosted element was so I tried to find the interface bit where it showed these values but somehow I'd completely forgotten where that was. I looked physically for it? And ended up finding it displayed somehow but also some electrolytic capacitors. I saw the poison was 400 and something % and decided that it was the strongest I had.

Some time later (transition?) I got on some sort of magical stone lift. Yellow beams of light were coming from underneath it, just where there were gaps between the lift and the surround it fit into. It was on a cliffside. I remember fog and a generally nightly and blueish atmosphere. Across from me was a portal, with purple fog coming out of it and I thought that should be the time portal. The lift started descending and I felt like it took me to the past somehow, or perhaps I was already in the past and I'd already come through the portal (portal potentially being the dream "explanation" of being here with no transition).

Down at the bottom was a cave of some sort, as I remember. Fairly light coloured stone, but dark in there.

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Notes:
- The bit with the goblin was a mix of places, like from Mephisto's lair in D2 and the invaded angelic towers from D3.
- In this bit I remember the camera/view angle was like in D3.
- The dream went on even after the cave at the bottom of the lift and while I did initially have recall of those parts of the dream, because I didn't make note of them in the morning, the recall beyond that point is completely gone now.
- This is the first D3 dream I remember having, but I'll have to go back through my previous notes and DJ entries to be sure.

Two dreams from this morning.

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Dream:

Don't remember the start of the dream really but I was seeing some pictures in a news article, I think on a newspaper. It was about two men and a woman who had returned to Earth after being in outer space, and they were being praised for their survival.

It seemed odd because I thought this to be a fairly routine thing and there was no subtext of an accident having occurred or anything.

Spoiler for Possibly gorey/graphic:

Each one of the space crew was featured in a picture each; they were naked and in hospital beds; the first man had no lower half of his body, I remember some bloody or exposed bits, including on his face, the right side of it was like burned or torn off or something. The second man had no lower half either, I remember he had sort of short and blond wavey hair. His right arm was beside him, he was lying on his side but the arm didn't seem to be attached to his body, it just looked like it was chopped or sawn off and was left next to him. He wasn't dead but he seemed to be asleep?

Something in the article mentioned "liquifacted organ failure" about this man. I remember noticing in the picture there was a bloody and jelly-like substance under him, primarily where his hips would have been.

The woman had no lower half, either. But she was clearly conscious and smiling toward the camera, both arms stretching out either side and giving thumbs up, seemingly rather positive.

Dream Fragment:

I was in a town, don't know it from anywhere in waking life but it had the typical look of towns from my native country. It had a characteristic path that in the dream's context was commonplace for me to use. The path went up to and across a small water area that was quite deep, the only way to cross it was on some rickety wooden beams. The water looked murky but clear at the same time, and I wasn't afraid of falling in, finding myself much more concerned with the fact that I realised that recently the beams had been moved and had to be adjusted now before I could cross.

I saw an old lady across from the water, she was carrying some shopping home and didn't look my way, but I heard her muttering that she wished her grandma would stop moving the beams. I had a passing thought of asking her to confront her grandma so it wouldn't happen again, but I didn't.

The dream went on for a while but I don't remember any details apart from the fact that it had something to do with aunts from my mom's side and my siblings.

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Notes:
- The first dream was quite unusual in its content and my sense of location was more inside the pictures than where I actually was reading this article from. This morning was disrupted by loud construction work at 7AM so maybe that had something to do with it.
- The general plot of that dream may simply have come because I've been watching some medical dramas recently, although there has been nothing in them quite like this.
- I'm remembering that the second dream took place during day time but everything looked particularly grey and overcast.

A few fragments but I remembered some more detail as I read and rewrote my notes from the morning.

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Dream:

In the old version of the square in my home town. It’s altered compared to my actual memory of it however. It was a bigger area somehow; this may relate to the fact that my memories of this version only exist from my childhood as it changed pretty early on in my life. But the dream takes place in a present time.

I have abilities from Diablo 2, more specifically Sorceress and Amazon abilities. I remember an interface overlay like in the game where I could pick the spells from.

Noteably I remember the explosive arrow and glacial spike abilities, but on closer inspection the glacial spike was actually called frostga.

I was shooting a bow with explosive arrows at these two guys that were just running around a bit aimlessly I think. They just wouldn’t die though and I kept running out of mana, for some reason glacial spike used a lot but explosive arrows didn’t (some uniques in the game granted it as a passive modifier, derived from that?).

Dream Fragment:

I remember there were transitions but the main place in the dream was this Egypt themed zone like a level from Unreal Tournament. It was night time and the zone in itself was more like a floating platform high up I. The sky. It had the shape of a circle but extended out of itself into “knots” on four corners?

Despite being night time it was fairly bright, moonlit mostly. But there were glitches with the lighting, like the level wasn’t finished properly, so some objects and areas were just far too bright like the gamma was wrong just for those bits but I accepted this as something that does happen.

Dream:

Was with mom and dad in the car, we were downtown but everything looked so different, more like a post modern and brand new style than what I think I would have expected, which would be old buildings.

Dad was commenting on how empty the entire area was. I don’t remember commenting myself. Nothing felt surprising or unusual in the dream. We went past some museums, one had written in big block capitals at its entrance: PAPU or something of the sort. As we went past it, I saw an ascending escalator inside the museum through some large and curved glass panes. I had a deja vu in the dream when I saw this.

We went a bit further along and I remember having thoughts about how this area was supposed to be for modern cars only or that it had been pedestrianised. We arrived near the square next to the river but it all seemed pedestrianised and like we weren’t supposed to be in the car here but dad didn’t realise.

A blonde or fake blonde and sort of nearly pale white lady walked up to us and then we weren’t in the car anymore but I thought nothing of it. She told dad that he couldn’t drive here, only “on the basement level” (to park?). There was a platform with road on it that was a lift that went underground just a bit ahead; I think I saw this before the lady was there, but I remember interacting with some console which had a blue GUI with options displayed. The last and only option I remember said something like “1950s (1980)”.

Really bad headache last night, but had some semi-lucid dream as I fell asleep. Haven't been making note of dreams very much in the last few days on account of going through a phase of being too tired on waking and too many mornings having their routines disrupted.

Edit: Somehow nearly forgot an important detail here; While I was in bed trying to fall asleep I did try to incubate dreams about working on my paintings again, my thoughts on this passed fairly early on and I got distracted with other thoughts, getting somewhat vivid music and other sleep cues instead but I suppose the lucid dream did relate directly to the incubation intent. I thought I'd try working on the incubation anyway because of my headache, and it did help to distract me from it.

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Lucid fragment (on falling asleep):

I didn't notice the transition from wakefulness to dream imagery but I was in a bigger version of our front room. It was day time, my paints and the table I keep them on were there and I remember the big window. I don't think the canvas I've been working on was there. I half realised I was dreaming and walked or ran forward into the room, towards the opposite wall, which is a corner where I keep a bunch of my stuff for painting, but in the dream context it's like there would be a door there or something, even though I couldn't see it yet; I carried out some hand checks as I moved even though I was already in a type of lucidity but the stability started to go pretty quickly and I lost my half-lucid state. Sort of faded away in terms of recall after that.

The only thing I remember after that is a gap of nothingness and then some dreams from the morning, that again I didn't turn into notes.

Dreams from 14th, 17th and 18th. Mostly just copied directly from any morning notes I made for each day. Some notes in-line with the entries.

---

14th:

Dream Fragment:

First dream? Some Egyptian place, a big outdoor temple. I remember detailed stone and all the shapes I normally associate with ancient Egyptian architecture. I remember night time but also day time. It was a fairly long dream.

It was a game like world or something. I was Link from Legend of Zelda? I remember fighting winged obsidian statues (likely "borrowed" from WoW). I remember the feel of a controller in my hands though. Maybe a Gamecube or Nintendo 64 controller, but could have just been a Wii one, since the joysticks have remained fairly similar over the years.

Dream Fragment:

A dream I'd travelled to my native country but with my high school class, and some other classmates from childhood. I remember we were in a coastal area visiting something. I forget all the details. This black I knew, Milt, was messing around some exhibit area? And then we were burying smoe ancient and withered corpse that had not received any funereal service. We then surrounded him with rocks and then placed larger boulders on top of him. The corpse was on a small dirt incline, about 20 or 30 degrees steep.

Then I remember a room, indoors but nearby. It was dark inside, but I can't remember what happened there.

Dream Fragment:

Last dream that I woke up with, a WoW dream. Was playing rogue as usual and I was together with a raid group in Orgrimmar. We were in a different version of Thrall's throne room, it was more like a mix of Stormwind in a way because there was a lot of white stone and it was well lit.

We were all bunched up in a corner, waiting for Horde players to come. I remember we didn't want to attack Thrall until we'd dealt with most of the nuisance players that would appear. We had already attacked Thrall before? I remember feeling surprise at the fact that none of the Alliance players from the raid group were messing around.

17th:

Scraps:

Something about trains? Vaguely recall the dream took place outside and that it was day.

18th:

Dream:

The dream was a bit of a mix of Freelancer and other space games I've played over the years. I was avoiding some large blocky asteroids while flying a ship, and when I got clear of the asteroids I noticed a planet in the distance. I kept my course which was already on approach to it and noticed a gas cloud/small nebula formation appear. It was a green-ish dark mustard colour and mostly surrounded the planet. Like a smog coming off the planet.

I remember the descent down into the atmosphere in some detail. There was some virtual interface element somewhere that, combined with the structures I saw, made me understand that the planet was mostly covered by factories and dense cities comprised mostly of narrow but tall skyscrapers. It looked like most of the surface area was being maximised for industrial output space, not for living. I landed somewhere and went to a bar of sorts, typical of Freelancer-like gameplay.

People didn't look well off. There was a stereotypical North American "Trucker" feel to the place and there was an overall air that this entire place existed in a state of bare subsistence. I remember talking to some of these people but I don't remember exactly about what. It was night time both through the descent and while I was at the bar place.

Dream Fragment:

Some underground place, very well lit. There was a feel to the dream like some of the more dark and serious anime type stuff, such as full film-type productions. There were policemen with gas masks and they threw some sort of stunning gas grenades. I try to escape with two other people. We were doing a heist or something? The police looked like the Secreta from E.Y.E. but with typical blue and white colours instead of gold and black.

Some transition or outside? A rail track of some sort. The dream was quite long but I was a bit too tired and I've forgotten most details. I remember two groups of people, and Auron from FFX. There was some cart carriage thing that went on the rail track...

Dream fragment from the 13th.

---

Fragment:

I was in some altered version of my old home, in particular it seemed to be centred around my first bedroom in the house but the layout of everything was completely different, and the halls and ceilings were much bigger. Perhaps a reflection of the different perspective from when I was very young (4-6?), but in the dream I was just the age I am now. I think I remember daylight coming from outside. In many senses the physical context of the dream was very reminiscent of my earliest conscious memory of waking life.

There were a lot of family characters present, mostly aunts from dad's side and my direct family in itself.

I don't remember many of the details anymore but one of the main dream plots was that there was this mouse which was no bigger than my closed fist, minus the tail. For whatever reason, I wanted to build it a nest near the top of one of the walls in "my room". I remember getting some wicker type material to make the nest with, or maybe like hay. But it had a paper-like texture, at any rate. I wanted the nest to be atop a pipe or pole that would be attached to the wall (visually reminded me of a wastepipe) so that the mouse could run up and down to and from the nest. The mouse had typical light brown fur.

---

Had a lot of dreams this past night and while recall in itself was decent on waking, didn't make note of anything at the time because I felt too tired.

On a slightly different note, lately I have been continuing to try and incubate the dream about painting; but again not really had any luck with actually dreaming it yet. Last night I did try to add the visualisation of a guide-type character, such as the black lizard dream character or the researcher from a short story I wrote a little while back. I tried to visually include other characters first, such as people from waking life that might be related to painting in some way, but I ended up feeling like I wouldn't connect with them in a dream sense or that some of them would be uninteresting/cliche, which is why I ended up picking these characters from within myself.

---

Scraps:


A lot of the dreams I had were about travelling, especially by plane. There was a relatively long dream sequence that had something to do with my old high school class and going on a school trip of some kind, but also something about me being famous in some sense?

In some form my high school class is related to painting, but the associative link is so deep that it goes beyond being related to just that. A lot of these dreams seemed to be more about the social aspect of life, and also about adventure in some sense.

Dreams from March 10th and 11th (today).

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10th:

Dream Sequence:

The last dream sequence started out with me playing a female gnome on WoW. Though I had rogue abilities my character's portrait indicated "level 49 warlock" when moused over. The character had a pointy dark purple hat and matching dress.

I used my stealth ability because I was in some distorted version of Tirisfal, mixed with Ashenvale, making me feel an imminent danger of being attacked by other players. I could see trolls riding around on raptors, a few level 60s but otherwise mostly around my own level. I was afraid that this approaching 60 hunter might spot me or become aware of me long enough to then start attacking but somehow, despite the level discrepancy, that didn't happen and I was able to get past him, down a natural slope with a path; as I did this the hunter was entering a dungeon with an entrance like Stratholme's service gate (the back entrance).

Then I saw other horde members, mostly between levels 17 and 29.

There was a river (more like Ashenvale this part), and this low level female orc warlock was swimming in the river, doing some quests by the looks of it. I realised I had a quest here too, to grab some dried up flowers floating in the water. I forget the item names now. Five items of one type, one of another, and some extra item that I already had on me anyway according to the quest log. While writing the initial note for this, my mind sort of suggested that the elf music from Ashenvale was playing, but I don't really remember that in the dream in itself. Probably the effect of a strong associative relationship between the dream's construct and the real memory archetype.

I got out of the water on the other bankside after collecting these items and I made the quest show me where to go. It started to display dashed paths on the parchment style user-interface map that the game has.

The paths it displayed were leading me through another quest first; there was this big, half hewn tree stump, here on this side of the river and inside it there were three sections where I had to speak to some kind of spirits? Doing this would activate something, and then when I was on the way to speak to the third one, I passed by an open area with bright light on it, not inside the tree stump area, but I had to go this way to go around to the third spirit.

In this brightly lit and grassy area, was a massive wooden frame, around a screen of sorts. An image appeared, symbols showing in sequence, once. First, a slightly rounded triangle, then a super simplified four-legged animal? And then, two other more complex symbols I can't describe or remember accurately.

After the symbols, a blonde girl, aged no more than ten or so I'd say, appeared on the screen. She was smiling and spoke to me directly, thanking me for finding her. She asked me a question, about myself, but I don't remember what it was. I do remember an interface popped up with some choices, three primary choices and an extra choice;

- "A sailorial heart."
- (I can't remember the second option.)
- "(Full control.)" :: This was the 'extra' option.
- "Full naval!"

For whatever reason, I felt that none were true to me at that time, except "full control", but I wasn't sure what it meant either.

Then, I could see my character from the girl's perspective; the character was giving the answer, but wasn't a female gnome anymore, but some sort of mix between Wolverine and something more feral.

I woke up soon after this.


11th:

Dream Fragment:

Diablo II. Playing a sorceress, or druid? Playing with H? Remember using the glacial spike spell.

Dream Fragment (part of a sequence continued in the next fragment):

Someone being racist about some fictional game races. Me and some girl investigate rumours and who it could be. We were part of some class on a tour or whatever. Susie from Miss Maizel was our teacher apparently. The girl with me accused Susie of being the racist. I defended her, saying Susie just thinks everyone is equally an ass. In the dream, I remember a dream memory about her giving food and being charitable, and I retell this to the girl.

Something happens, not sure what.

Near the end of my dream, I am aware that I had been wearing shorts; now I was changing into my camo shorts but they have a rip or hole on the front of the right leg, which I didn't realise until putting them on. But I want to change back to the previous ones and then I can't or something.

Dream Fragment (somehow related to previous):

Getting on some kind of cruise boat with H. We were the last two to get on board, even though many more people were still waiting and queued.

H carried on through some corridor. Everything was nicely carpeted and felt cozy I suppose. But then before I followed through, this girl appeared from the same corridor and she was saying she wanted to give up her place on the cruise to someone else, but a crew member (like a flight attendant but not?) stopped her. Apparently the girl was a windows svchost.exe process. I seemed to have some sort of meta-physical view of the dream reality but remember too little.

Then I remember being in our private quarters with H, unpacking or settling in. In the quarters there was some weird dedicated 8 volt and 19 volt power supply, apparently meant for modern turntables and cassette decks. We thought it was odd, and wasteful.

Dream:

With H in a city of some sort. Underground? Looks dirty and rusty. Waiting for this team of people to fit some modular concrete block things, with huge power cables coming out the back. Really heavy-duty looking stuff.

Someone shows up? Or there's a nun, but she's actually a shape-shifter. Turns into a black guy that looks like Zimos or Ruby Rod. He then pulls up two high calibre sawn-off shotguns. He shoots a bunch of people from this team and there's a small panic of sorts. Then more people come down from a ramp on the opposite side from where I was. The shape-shifter pretends to be one of them, but doesn't transform? And then he runs up the ramp to get away. Me and H follow.

H's van is up here, outside. It's night time and fairly dark, but there are street lights. We want to help the shape-shifter escape and grab him, trying to get him in the van. He doesn't want to get in though, and transforms into a white tiger, running off. We follow him closely, to a cake shop. He goes in and morphs into a chef but the other woman following him with the intent of catching him doesn't notice.

We then confront him, stopping him from getting away from us and ask him to come with us, reassuring him about safety.

Then H is no longer H and is a mix of Gibbs, Auron and Riddick, and then I'm not there anymore. There's a cut and I see a scene of telepathic dialogue between the shape-shifter and the other character. The shape-shifter mentions his "fury" and the other character asks the shifter if they know anything about his "Furya".

---

No notes, maybe some later.

Dreams taken from phone memos from today and yesterday. Will try to arrange chronologically and make notes for each day separately.

---

7th:

Dream Fragment:

There's a high school context to the dream. Vi from my class back then, he was walking around with me, near my old home. We were headed towards the main square or the subway?

In reality we'd never spoken a lot, but in the dream we were talking non-stop for some reason. I was telling him about a god of war? And about a dark goddess.

Not sure where this fits into the dream but I remember some other part, relating to this goddess. There are strange cliffs, rock looks sedimentary; and there are scattered graves but I don't remember what they look like anymore. I spoke to the dark goddess I think.

Other stuff happens in between and all I have left is a fragment from the end of the dream. I was gigantic and a ten story building was only about ankle height for me. I was running somewhere, taking long strides over cities and hills. I avoided excessively mountainous areas. It was quite sunny and clear.

Some areas were under mass floods, because of the dark goddess? Something about her being angry. There were craters or abysses which the water spiralled into.

Notes:

- The irony of the last part of this dream is that this is one of my current lucid challenges.
- I don't remember what I was wearing, or if I was wearing anything at all in the last part of the dream, but in the early parts of the dream I was wearing my old cream hoodie, except it had a front pocket thing, which it actually doesn't.
- I don't remember actually seeing this goddess in the dream, but I have an archetype appearance in mind visually, where she appears sort of half-naked and has somewhat messy but long black hair. Has red iris eyes.

---

8th:

All sort of a continuous dream, but transitions and details are highly fragmented:

Inside some structural complex. My family is here, primarily siblings and parents. I remember L talking and showing me a few things around the place. I think this place was like a house L and S were building?

There's certainly lots of concrete to the structure, and some sort of carpeting thing going on. I remember a diffused sunlight from directly above. At this point I was in a concrete tunnel overhang with huge glass panes to the side. I could feel that the sunlight was coming from a diffusing rectangular skylight much higher up.

Then after seeing into a few different rooms and going a bit dark, there was a transition of some kind.

I was just outside the building I used to live in. It's daytime but not sure what the sky is like. Colours are semi-vivid. H is here in some form and I feel like I'm a small girl or something. I play around the cobbled area and then there's something about money. I was making 100 an hour by just moving some small 1kg bags of flour? But because there was limited demand, then I wasn't needed anymore, which made me disappointed.

Transition or cut.

Short sequence where me and H were about to play some board game. Not sure where we are, but indoors. Then all of a sudden, MB appears. I feel really apprehensive and tense, but oddly enough H is fine with his presence. I remember what I told mom some days ago in waking life, that we don't let MB hang out anymore, and yet here he is.

We play a test round of the board game and then I start putting it all away, in the hope he'll get the hint and go away. I am confused as to why H hasn't told him to go either. I feel on edge and like I could become aggressive.

Transition.

Some weird sort of library. Reality physics mixed with game-type physics. There's a very short farclip plane. H is here and talks to me about something. I remember a purple and orange haze and some bookshelves. I walk around somewhat disorientated. I remember going into a room that I could see clearly and there were rolled up bits of paper, or scrolls?

Transition again.

I was on the computer, looking at a reddit link from some support group forum for people with my illness. The reddit link had an embedded youtube video that had some furry characters on the preview.

The first line I remember either from reddit or the video description was "The inner drunkard voice of the characters we draw ghandara macrophylla". This doesn't fully make sense even in the dream and somehow I also feel the video will likely have someone with a really annoying voice, so I don't think I played it anyway. Passing thoughts about drawing.

Notes:

- I had to look up "ghandara", and the closest word I could find is "gandara", which means wetland(s) in Galician. Though it's a fairly familiar language, I didn't know this word specifically. "macrophylla" I know from plants, meaning large leaves or so. So that would make it "large leafed wetland" or something in a more literal sense, but it still doesn't link directly to the rest of the description text. I think in the dream the "macrophylla" was just a misspelling of "macrophilia" but it still doesn't explain the other random word.
- Perhaps the oddest thing about the video link was that I have neither used reddit nor any online support group for my illness in a long time. The rest of the fragment's context seems to relate more to the fact that I haven't been drawing lately, mostly because of how I've been feeling, but also to the natural feelings of jealousy that seem to crop up in me sometimes when the art of others is on show.
- In the weird haze library area, the purple and orange may have been a bit symbolic, as I associate purple to myself and orange to H, who was also there.
- When MB was playing this board game with us, he was being as irritating as ever, all the more reason I wanted him gone.
- Although I remember S was in the first part of the dream, I don't remember hearing her speak, which seems unlikely. That first part felt like the longest and the second part felt like the shortest.

This is the DJ entry I’ve been wanting to make for a while. Though I forgot to mention it in xcv I did try to incubate the dream about my clouds painting last night too.

Lately I feel that I’ve made some progress in regards to dreaming overall but at the moment my biggest impediment feels wholly out of my control, and that’s the issue I have of taking between 60 to 90 minutes to fall asleep, regardless of the time of day/night.

Falling asleep does feel easier when H is in bed at the same time but likewise I seem to lose focus of any thoughts about dream techniques much more easily. Even so, trying to incubate this dream about my painting has been helpful in that regard too since it’s helping me practice to stay in that focus even when H is in bed too.

The dream incubation visualisations aren’t particularly imaginative but do go into all the minimum details I think I’d need to have in the dream anyway. I also try to insert personal dream signs into the visualisations.

—

About a week ago, I tried that thing of half-dreaming while listening to a full soundtrack again; and what I’ve noticed combined with my previous attempt is that generally it takes half an hour to start getting into that state (half the soundtrack roughly). This last attempt’s first half was preoccupied with those self doubting trivial thoughts that show up sometimes, but eventually I got over it.

Though the half-dream state didn’t go as far as last time (poorer visuals and weaker sensations this time), it did work. Unfortunately, because of how it was a weaker immersion, it did take more conscious effort to stay focused on the sensations and so it felt a bit forced.

The loudness or intensity of the music paired with the isolating nature of this particular set of headphones feels extremely important for achieving this, since it forces whole-body sensation while “disconnecting”, in a sense, from external input. My view on this is that the disconnect facilitates the half-dream state because it’s more like being asleep already even while still awake and semi-focused.

The other factor of note was that this time I was more preoccupied about the outside world too; since I was home alone this time I ended up feeling very vulnerable while doing this (in a tense way). As well as that, the previous time I also did this when I was already starting to get sleepy at night time, but this time it was done during the afternoon. Overall I attribute the smaller success to these various factors and the fact that I was simply more distracted from what I was trying to do anyway.

—

The last note I think I’ll make is that my pain and tiredness have been bad for months, even on waking up, so a lot of times when I want to make note of dreams I really do feel incapable of it because of how tiring it feels. Still, this is all the more reason that I feel I’ve been fairly diligent and like I’m making progress about dreaming since I started being more active about the DJ again.

Woke up at around 6:30 in the morning from a dream. Had other dreams later but was too tired to make even small mental notes of the details, so no recall for those dreams.

---

Dream and awakening:

I woke up in the dream, I was apparently sleeping on a bed with dad. It looked like some version of my bedroom in the old place but it looked like my parent's room a bit too. I was too hot and the covers, the bed, etc, everything felt too hot. I got up and saw this big red fan heater H has, it was on the floor next to the bed.

I woke dad up and asked him why the heater was here and why it was on. I thought of turning it off but for some reason didn't. I concluded from looking at the heater or something else that the room was at 49C. I felt particularly unwell and remember shortly walking about the dream room before I woke up in reality. I don't remember sweating, just exhaustion really.

In reality H was pressed a bit too much against me and I felt that the bed was far too hot. I thought we might have left the heated blanket on through the night, but seemingly it was off. I went for a wee that I didn't realise I really needed, after H also got up because of the noise I had made stumbling around.

---

Notes:

- This type of dream is very typical for when I need to wake up for some biological reason, in this case needing a wee.
- Being in the same bed as dad was common when I was a child; I'd often get into bed with my parents in the middle of the night, usually sleeping between them. But I can't really remember why I did that anymore or what made me wake up in the first place. I don't recall any negative emotions from back then.