DarkestDarkness

Yesterday was quite a busy day so even though I'd made notes on waking, didn't get a chance to write the dreams on the DJ here. There's a fragment from today too.

Last night I tried to incubate a dream about a painting I have on my easel at the moment. I want to figure out how to do these clouds like another painting I've seen very recently.

Unfortunately every time I was in the process of visualising the dream and setting intentions to become lucid etc., my thoughts would start drifting away in a random direction and it would take me a little while before I realised this was happening each time. In the end I guess I just fell asleep, but had no dream that I can recall relating to this incubation.

Either way, may continue to try and incubate this specific dream over the next few nights. If nothing else, it'll get me thinking about the painting.

---

Dream Fragment, one day ago:

My sibling T, driving. I'm in the car too, but on the back seat? It's dad's car I think, or something like it. Countryside roads and hilly landscape. The sky is a bit grey, but it's daytime. Looked more like here than there (old home).

Someone else is in the car with us, not sure who, but they're of small stature. Female? Makes a comment on how good T's hair is looking. I think to myself, or perhaps even comment out loud about how much better the hair does seem versus the last few years.

Scrap, one day ago:

Fighting/shooting in a game. A mix of Unreal Tournament and a tank game I've played more recently.

Dream Fragment, today:

I was playing or in World of Warcraft. I was playing a female gnome rogue and was in the Wetlands, I remember the grungy and practically wet atmosphere quite well. I saw another gnome player, but they were a Horde character somehow. I noticed they'd spotted me so I used stealth and waited for them to come past.

I opened with a stun from stealth and then after the stun I tried to manage my energy so that I'd be able to interrupt any spells as they'd start casting. The enemy gnome was a mix of a warlock and a mage? I seem to remember winning the fight but it felt like it took a very long time.

---

No notes.

Two dreams this morning, made notes soon after waking up. Need to make a little in-between DJ entry at some point with notes on how things have been going and to make note of what type of thoughts I've been having, so I can look back later and have an idea of how I was framing things at this time.

---

Dream Fragment:

At a computer somewhere. Visuals feel narrow, a bit of tunnel-vision, kind of? Also not really aware of my position, feels odd, like maybe I'm slumping but not.

I'm playing this side-scroller game, a graphic novel of sorts. It looks half sketch/half digital paint, and seems to be focused on furry themes.

I'm concerned when my parents would walk in, in turns, to ask me questions about something else. I worry that the game might show something indecent at those times. I have a vague recall of the art from the game, but it was all a bit jumbled anyway, like a weird collage of sorts.

Dream Fragment:

I was in a city area of some kind, similar to old home. I was walking around with scattered groups of people. Mostly people from high school I think, some friends, some teachers. Most of them were the ages from around the time I knew them, I suppose because I haven't seen them since school.

I remember crossing some bridges, with fantastic views. Some cyclist event, had to watch out for them, my friend Da was there and he was trying to help us as a group be aware of the cyclists.

Then there was a more park-like place after that. Still night but I think this is around where it starts to change. At this point I had thoughts of being sick of walking slowly, hence I started to want to separate from the group (this feels like a metaphor somehow). I also started cutting through the grass and rocky bits between the paths. I'd jump down some small ledges too. I remember seeing both JCs there. JoCo and JoCa.

I had the feeling of a backpack on me, but faintly. I did notice better that I had my modern boots on, and I could feel and hear them whenever I jumped from those small ledges. But I was also afraid that my ankles would give way when I did the little hops, as it has always been a problem for me. I was also concerned I was being stupid like having my hands in pockets or whatever when jumping, again, bad experience of needing my hands for balance or catching myself at the wrong time.

The dream went from dark night with street lights to orange sunrise morning by the end, and unlike many dreams it was just very gradual, there wasn't a super sharp change.

Then I was mostly separated and ahead of everyone. There was this car parked on the pavement that went down to the left, around a corner. At this point in the dream I remember having thought that I was starting to memorise this place and that I could find my way around better. In the dream I remember very clearly I had been in this area before. Then, I got into the car, Yuna from Final Fantasy was there. We were waiting for Auron, who in the dream was supposedly a summoner.

I woke up soon after this, with one of Vivaldi's four seasons in my head. Spring or Summer I think.

---

Notes:

- The first dream probably relates to a lot of aspects of my life despite how short the dream seemed to be; there's a few key notions there:
-- The idea of parents frequently nagging/interrupting something. Something I'm glad to be free of now.
-- The idea of a disconnect between me and them as child/parent. Something I often wonder about if I had a child of my own.
-- The idea of wanting to belong inside a realm of fantasy; in the most childlike interpretation of this idea and of the word "fantasy".
- The other notion is this recurring issue I have with all my artwork, where I sort of just "drop it", even when it's nearly completed. I often leave projects half-baked and forget about them or feel like it's too difficult to return to them because I don't know what I was doing anymore. The half-sketch/half-painted nature of the drawings in the dream feels very much linked to this. Very recently I've had the thought of coming back to some paintings I made months ago and trying to add more detail, especially one that I had hoped to sell but that didn't manage to actually sell.

- A lot of the content in the second dream seems to be directly connected to teen years and life as a child. Primarily, the whole "walking somewhere in a group" thing was very familiar to road trips but also to walking back home from school.
- Most of the locations in the second dream were very interesting. Makes me think of the places I might build myself in the city building game I've been playing. But also many of these places were similar and familiar to places from my childhood.
- Last night while I was playing Final Fantasy, I had a passing memory for no apparent reason. I think it was a location in the game that triggered it, because my cousin used to play this Final Fantasy and other ones quite a lot. I remembered being on the highway, headed back home from the North, after visiting my cousin. This had triggered a sort of chain of memories. This entire dream felt very closely related to that cluster of memories.

Two or three dreams. Initially didn't hold on to details so recall is a bit fuzzy overall.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was in dad's scenic, sat at the back. Someone else, too, maybe my sibling T? Mom was on the drivers seat, which was on the wrong side for the car.

We're in the middle of some city. It feels like a familiar place but doesn't seem to be anywhere specific; it's sunny and I remember green trees. We're close to some parking spaces. Mom gets a call on her phone and has to take it so for some reason she gets out of the car.

I step out too and with a gesture suggest that I can park the car. She gestures back a "sure, whatever", obviously concentrating on the conversation on the phone; I then get in the driver's side.

At first I drive forward a bit and then start reversing and turning into one of these parking spaces that was free next to some other parked cars. I get it nearly right, smack in the middle on the first try but I remember feeling the pedals and that reversing felt a bit jerky, so I tried to take care. Still, I managed to let it jerk at the end of manoeuvring, making the back hit a stone wall that ran along behind the parking spaces. I could feel it was a small impact and only the plastic bumper would have touched the wall.

Then dad appeared, walking across the front and commenting something? I sort of proudly told him about how I did or something.

Dream Fragment:

Some other dream. I remember being at my old home, in my former room. It's dark, the curtains are closed. I'm uncertain about what version of room layout this is in the dream. I was looking at texts on a phone, my first phone maybe? It was a red phone. I am my current age, however.

I was checking a text from my childhood and school friend, Di. Looking back on texts before his reply, I had apparently messaged him, ages ago.

He was now finally replying, saying he was sorry, but that he was now pan sexual or something. That didn't make much sense on its own, but I understood it to mean that he had become trans (similar sound?). Further, he said that he wouldn't be able to meet with me [ever again] because of [two letter acronym?].

I forget the rest of the text exactly but I remember feeling disappointed somehow. I had a number of passing thoughts about potential replies I could give, or whether it would be worth bothering at all. Other passing thoughts about how I used to remember him, and about how I could mention some funny memories in a text reply.

Dream Fragment:

There was a third dream but even though it was the last one, I don't really remember anything except that it was a city-building sim game of some kind.

---

Notes:

- In the second dream, I remember I felt overall sad and disappointed. I was happy that my friend had moved on or something, but I suppose I've never really let go of how our relationship as friends just evaporated over a number of years, for no special reason that I was ever able to discern.
- In the first dream, while mom did use to drive, that was years ago before I was born. My mom hasn't driven since then at the very least.
- Mom's distraction with the phone somehow feels related to how she's been behaving lately when she speaks to me on the phone; it's not that she's distracted from me, it's more that she's distracting herself. Some element of worry present here.
- I and H have been playing a city-building game quite a bit lately, which is probably what the third dream was based on.

Went back to a half sleep after waking in the morning. Had a small moment of lucidity, the first one for quite some time. Made note of as much as I could before I had to get up to help with something.

---

Dream Fragment:

The only dream I can vaguely remember before my first awakening. Something about a character that walks around some snowy place, finds something and goes back to the past in a pretty stereotypical UFO. Lands at the same place and stumbles on the snow and becomes sort of blue? I expect him to meet himself again but he doesn't, instead meeting an old man. They talk.

They have a discussion about time travel and the past. The man is skeptical but then the other character says something that convinces him and the man states "it's 1976" and the other one says "I came from 2070" or a similar year. He tells the man about how in the future the knowledge of the past, after a certain point, is just unknown. He tries to convince the old man of this by stating facts about history, going back, up to the point where he simply didn't know anything else.

Dream:

As I fell back asleep slowly, the dream seemed to progress quickly. I was half aware of my real body at a few points and the clarity of the visuals varied quite a bit. I was with H somewhere.

There was this guy and his dad, they weren't very happy with each other. The son was dating a teacher, a woman, at his school. Then she found out that his dad was married and that mattered for some reason.

I remember walking outside, near these people. They sort of became part of the background of what was going on and I notice the area is by a large river, or sea. There are quays and the area looks like a port or dock. It's sunny and there are a few large white clouds in the distance.

Me and H, we walk towards a building closer to the dock area. I don't remember walking in, but we're inside. It's a large room, much darker than being outside but there are bits of sunlight here and there, but I don't notice where they come through. There are quite a few people here, this feels like a lobby, or waiting room, for departures?

On the right-hand wall, there's a massive hole and strange rocky formation. I approach it and notice how smooth it is. I look inside, it looks perfectly smooth and the rock is a yellowed off-white but there are tinges of green here and there. There are smaller but perfectly smooth and rounded holes on the rock. It reminds me of pumice and it made me think that lava made this hole. I visualise that happening? Not sure.

I walk outside, as there is a door or passageway next to the hole. This wall of the building was actually some sort of dark tinted glass, and I could already see from inside that this side was some sort of canyon.

There are paths along either side, but there are no connections between these paths except for the lobby place. The rock is all the same as the one from the "volcanic hole". I remember looking at the cliff tops higher than us and noticing the sky looks green-ish. But as I walk here, I realise, wait, how was that hole there? It just wasn't right. I half realise I'm dreaming and at this point I feel my real body more, but in the dream I check my hands. Although they appear normal, there seems to be little detail and I realise I'm dreaming.

The realisation is quickly overpowered by a bunch of random actions, my level of lucidity actually being very low. As if it were a game, I start placing a prop over and over again, along the canyon path I'm on. The prop is a study desk with drawers, with a chair too. H then tells me we don't need them for some reason. My dream awareness starts to go again at this point. I start smashing the chairs against the edge of the cliff and throwing the stuff down the ravine. It all hits the ground too quickly for how deep this place looks and I complain out loud to H "this is a dream, that's a deep canyon, the chairs shouldn't be dropping a metre and then smashing, that's too quick!", half with the expectation that something would change about it, but nothing did. We keep smashing and throwing the furniture for a while, after which I've lost any amount of awareness I had left and we return to the dream plot.

At the end of the path is a similar building. We go in, and it's dark. Again it also had an entrance on the other side of the canyon where the second path was. Inside it looks like someone's private office. Well decorated and tidy, the walls had a mix of plasterwork and floral motif patterned wallpaper.

The wall at the other end of the room, behind a desk and so on, seemed solid, but as we approached, it smashed or crumbled. On the other side is a lobby full of people, at a lower height, but not much. I talk to H, but don't remember what we said exactly, except that I expressed some concerns about dealing with these people. They were university students. There were a bunch of signs and notices in the room, mostly about events?

I decide that we can proceed and I step over the rubble and walk down a small ramp made by the rubble. A girl, not much younger than me, sees me and when I comment something to H she says "well we don't want you here anyway, you look like a scary punk!". I feel complimented and somehow her comment made me feel more confident. I approach her and put my hands on her shoulders and smile, in a half attempt to scare her a bit more and in a half attempt to thank her.

I then walk away towards a corridor that took a right turn on the opposite side of the room, but I don't remember any more details.

---

No notes for now, quite tired.

Over the last two days or so I haven't been able to either retain dream memories or make note of them for multiple reasons. I do still have some scraps of memories left so maybe writing those out would be a good idea.

---

Scrap, two days ago:

In the kitchen. There's a fluffy, sort of orange coloured spider thing? It's in the thing that holds loose leaf tea for brewing, maybe it's dead or not but it looked crammed in it. It's in the sink anyway, and I turn the tap on and water pours on it.

The fur absorbs the water and it gets a lot bigger. In the dream this spooks me, mostly because it was unexpected, but then it somehow becomes a bit sexual as I decide in the dream that I shouldn't be afraid of it and I show it my naked bottom, but it felt like it was partially a taunt of some kind too. I don't remember any other details except that the dream started to sort of distort, weird colours.

Scrap, one day ago:

The dream just seemed to be a Johnny Bravo cartoon or something. I just remember some really crude scene where there was a woman with her breasts bare and Johnny made a crude remark in surprise.

Scrap, today:

Lots of being outside. Day time mostly, but kind of grey. Was in a van at several points? Maybe helping H. Memory of the dream has faded more than I expected. It felt like it was a long dream sequence.

---

Some notes:

- The dream with the spider was odd. Mostly, it made me realise that while I have largely gotten over my phobia of spiders, there are still plenty of types of spider that I wouldn't commonly see in waking life, simply because they don't exist here and I think that seeing these different kinds might still make me jump a bit more than seeing the ones that do exist around here. The instinctual behaviour of getting spooked by spiders never seems to have really abandoned me even though I got over my phobia, but perhaps it's also a sign that there's still more that can be done about it.
- The sexual part of that dream probably relates to how I've realised in the past that positive emotional association can be helpful when dealing with phobia-type stuff.
- Not sure what brought on the cartoon dream, as I haven't watched that specific cartoon at all in over 10, maybe 15 years?
- Today's dream had an overarching plot to it, but I can't remember any specific detail anymore that would let me expand on the dream's detail.

Morning of 23rd of Feb.

---

Dream Fragment:

Not sure where to start. I was in a church, but I remember a feel of RTS game to things and I was preparing an assault on the priest or something. Details are missing. Then I was ready and water appeared and partially flooded the church? Previously, me and someone else had replaced the trousers the priest was going to wear. Then the water was more like bed covers or something.

Eventually this bit is over and I'm outside walking around. I walk on cobbled streets, meant for pedestrian use only. I reach some place like a parking lot. Mom is there for whatever reason.

She starts telling me off about the trousers thing with the priest. She tells me all about how he can't get out of bed easily now and how depressed and sad he is... He has to call for a bucket of boiling water to be poured on his legs to get up each morning? I remember that scene vaguely, visually.

Apparently he can't feel them anymore either. I think it's all a bit ridiculous, just because he was without his trousers for a while in a cold church...

Mom and I get into an argument of sorts. She won't see reason and how there's something weird about priests story. I ask rhetorically "how miserable can he be, with his fancy BMW" but she gives me the old "money isn't happiness" crap. I comment "good riddance" if the priest doesn't return to the church, because he had a monotone voice that made his sermons completely boring, regardless of how interesting they actually were.

Eventually we can't agree on anything and mom gets into this old and grey VW van? I walk away and put my hood up. At this point I'm keenly aware of what I'm wearing. My working trousers, my old cream hoodie and my black boots.

I feel moody after the argument and walk back from where I cam from on the wide cobbled paths. Some teens are about, up to no good I feel. I feel moody and I am aware of my face doing that thing where I look so grumpy that I just end up looking nasty and violent to anyone who sees me.

I message H on my phone, which feels bigger than it actually should be. My message is about mom and how it felt like she was being unreasonable. While messaging I am distracted and I take the wrong turn. I see a barrier of some kind along the path and a kid's park beyond it. I feel annoyed. In the dream I knew this wasn't the way and turn back around and cross some bridge.

The surroundings are odd along these paths. It's like an old town area but there are no buildings properly speaking? Just some walls, not even building walls. A transition?

I am back at the church. I realise it's more like a chapel really. There's a service and the priest is nowhere to be seen. There's a small black man. It almost looks like he suffers from some form of dwarfism. People in the church aren't paying full attention because they are reading something on the pews about the priest's current/latest condition.

The small man invites me to stay, and I nod or something. I try to find somewhere I feel comfortable about sitting. When I do sit, he starts singing. He has a beautiful and sort of deep voice, much more than I'd expect for how small he is. I think to myself how I'd much prefer to see him all the time at the services, over that priest.

Then everything finishes, and we're outside. I find the priest at some stairs going into an underground area, where I was going to leave through. The priest is wearing what looks to be an overly warm coat, even for a cold day and he seems to be pretty much fine in terms of his health.

For whatever reason, an old school friend of mine is in the tunnel too, but I see him as if I'd see him every day. But he's carrying some stuff, including a toolbox like H has. I give him a hand and bring the toolbox. We quicken our pace and move away from the group of people behind us. I want to tell him something about what's been going on, but I forget what it was.

Some transition again. I'm at the priest's house for some reason. He and his wife are there. They're not aware of my presence? They talk about how their plan worked and how they could now swap hairstyles or something. It didn't make much sense at all even in the dream, but I felt it proved I was right about something weird going on with the priest.

---

No notes for now.

Only some small fragments. Didn't make notes on getting up and the DJ wasn't the first priority after getting up.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was helping or teaching a small boy. He was from a village called Fargoth? It was South-East from wherever I was, somewhere in the North of England. I remember seeing it on a map, a mix of an online map and a city-building game map. I remember we looked at maps together too, he talked about Spain for some reason and I remember zooming in on the deserts and seeing farmland.

Dream Fragment:

I was helping a North American general, he wanted to take me and a group to battle somewhere specific. In the dream I had already been in battle at that place before. The general must have been in his fifties but had white hair for the most part. I remember he had a typical US soldier's helmet from decades past, not a modern one.

We went to the place and we were under fire from pretty much all directions. I remember it was dark and atmospheric, the sky was a certain mix of red and black and smoke. The general wanted to go after a certain Zen-Chi and so I lead him up a hill where I knew he was firing from or something. This entire location had small houses and maybe was a small fort or old castle? I remember a little market thing, in ruins.

At the top of this climb, mostly stone steps, there was a wooden shed. There were loads of woodworking tools on the outside, and other sharp implements that had nothing to do with woodworking.

The general wanted to go head in, I stopped him physically. I told him he couldn't, that was exactly how I'd lost a friend to Zen-Chi myself and so I decided we'd taunt him a little first. We shouted at him from outside to try and unsettle him; then we opened the creaky wooden door. It was brighter inside, there were some tungsten bulbs lighting the place. There were physical separations or curtains all over the inside, but before I went in, from the tool rack, I grabbed a long and heavy metal rod that had a perfect point at one end. It was like a cast aluminium javelin, it was odd.

Despite it's length I managed to manoeuvre inside with it. I motioned for the general to stay back and I crouched, seeing under the separators inside the shed. I could see Zen-Chi's feet. I approached slowly and heard him taunt back at us now, I can't remember what he said.

Then, when I was close enough, I struck his foot with the sharp point of the javelin, quickly pulling it back and then I think I got up and opened the barrier, which was a curtain after all, and struck Zen-Chi in the head with the sharp point, then his chest.

In that moment it was somewhat unsettling to strike him on the head, which made me feel as though I'd hesitated, but I wanted to be sure he'd die, hence the second strike on the chest.

---

Notes:
- The hesitation and unsettling feeling of striking someone in the head so brutally like I did against this dream character reflects well how I feel about certain situations in fighting. I feel it's somewhat foul to destroy someone's face and head, not to mention it paints a very gruesome picture in my imagination.

- The plot of that dream was pretty generic, as I have no special reason to have been on either side of the dream's conflict.

- In waking life, H pointed out that Zen-Chi seems like a pretty generic name, which may even not be a name at all, since it's just two oriental words relating to the spiritual and meditative worlds.

- When Zen-Chi was dying, he had an expression of surprise on his face. I'm remembering now that one of the taunts that me or the general shouted at him was that we'd take all his woodworking tools once we were done with him.

- The dream where I was helping the boy was much longer, but because I didn't make any notes and had it very early on in the morning, very few details were retained through sleeping again and having the second dream.

- The red, black and smoke of the second dream reminded me of Stratholme in World of Warcraft. It sort of seemed to imply that the atmosphere itself was practically on fire, but during that dream I remember seeing tracer bullets and shells flying above us, very similar to a tank game I've played recently.

Just one continuous long dream, that I can remember.

---

Dream:

In the earliest part I remember, I was wandering around some city streets. It was dark, but there were street lights, orange/yellow hues. For whatever reason I was about two to three times the normal size and as I turned around a corner I ran into an equally sized character at some sort of dead end. There was a "temporary" concrete wall blocking a street.

Not sure what the character looked like exactly, but was female and some kind of taur. Part woman, part something else, maybe scorpion or sphynx. I used some kind of metal club, like a baseball bat maybe, and attacked her. As we were fighting, I knocked her away with the bat and she got hurled down an adjacent street. Then something with the dream changes and she's gone. I'm normal sized and in the street where she was hurled into was a car, damaged I think.

I got some sort of passing thought about how I was dreaming before, when I was bigger and fighting, but this obvious irony was somehow lost on me during this moment. I approached the car and inside I see a man. The car's inner lights make him quite clear but I don't remember what he looked like exactly. Chiseled, but skinny? He is doing some kind of drug or smoking something. Police and paramedics arrive all of a sudden, but nobody tells me to clear out or move away.

The guy is then dead. I could see him lying back in a weird position, sort of slumped down but contorted between the two front seats of his car. One of the paramedics uses a syringe of some sort, squirting some liquid into the dead guy's nose. It fizzes and bubbles. They conclude from this reaction that he'd used some sort of toxin to kill himself.

Nearby, from about six or so yards away, a man is taking some photos with a camera. I remember the camera had a band that went around his neck. In that moment I think that he's taking some photos for the local news and he catches me on some of the shots, hoping he'll blur my face. I think of speaking to him but end up walking away, not actually too bothered about it.

Then at some point, I realised I didn't have my phone anymore. I couldn't feel it on me and I believe I must have left it in the car from before. I realised the police will have the car by now and so I go to a street where the police station is located. It's a plain concrete building with several small alcove-like bits. Each of them is effectively an entrance, with a ladder and some sort of shutter? Or garage door.

I ring a doorbell thing or buzzer, but an image immediately lights up on a large screen next to the ladder and the buzzer. It looks like a poster but it says on it something like: "We're sorry, we're closed. The police needs rest too." This doesn't bother me, I accept that it makes sense, with only a slight feeling of being annoyed by not having made any progress in finding the phone. I somehow realise that it's 2AM or past that and that they won't be opening for another few hours, at least. I go back to the crime scene with the car hoping to find it there, maybe I'd just left it on the ground.

Indeed, when I get there, I do find the phone on the floor. I remember walking around the streets for quite a while, I'm not sure how it all fits in terms of timeline but details are too vague now. Then there's some kind of transition? The dream shifts somehow anyway. I'm then in a town or city. Rome, I hear someone or myself saying. It's day time now and I'm walking around sort of in circles on these streets, around a central square area.

There are people singing and greeting tourists and foreigners. I join up with some group of tourists? We walk up to this little altar thing in the middle of the square. The buildings I can remember around us are short, some might even be ruins. We are at a high point, there are no hills or taller buildings in sight. This altar thing is considered to be a mosque? But it looks more like a right-angled dried up fountain of some sort. I sit there with the group of tourists. I relax for a moment and look around.

Then randomly, these two black teens walk up to me and throw or spray some green paint at me. I get up and show some sort of indignation at what they did but then end up just ignoring them since I knew they just wanted to provoke. They leave with cheeky smiles on their faces, I feel some sense of amusement myself? Then a man in the group, an older black guy, engages in conversation with me about what just happened. We agree on how people do these provocative things and we talk about something else; meanwhile the dream starts to change around us and sort of becomes like a fancy bar or lodge hall. It's not day time anymore, I remember lights being on in this building.

At this point my memory of the rest of the dream is very vague since I couldn't manage to make notes of it. I remember being in my parents old room and then something about mom being in bed and giving me and this older guy advice? Some sort of construction modules. I remember words labeled on them. "Industrial (?)", "Research (?)" and other similar things.

---

No notes for now.

Yesterday the same as usual lately, wasn't able to make notes in the morning and then forgot too much. Managed to make some notes this morning.

---

Dream:

World of Warcraft dream. I was a dwarf paladin and I remember being teleported to the Scarlet Monastery. I was next to the instance entrance doors and from there I went across the halls, down to the stairs at the other end. I don't remember seeing any scarlet troops.

I had a two-handed weapon, and directly to my right after coming down from the stairs was the meeting stone (which I think isn't the correct location for it). Across the way, where the meeting stone should probably be was an orc hunter, around level 90, sitting. I don't remember seeing or knowing what my own level was.

I walked for a bit but then decided to get on a mount. In the dream, I remembered or realised I had just bought the 100% riding skill, and then summoned a worg-looking mount. The worg looked thin and sort of rough, which seemed a bit odd, but I didn't really care at the time.

Starting to ride away, I could see with my camera rotated that the orc was getting up and then he started using his auto-shot attack. He didn't use any special abilities but each of the arrows was hitting for about 900 damage, which seemed to be about 10% of my health each time. I took about three shots in total, managing to ride away far enough but the last shot had hit me from what I thought was an unreasonable distance in the game, over 90 or so yards.

I rode the worg through the plagued and sombre woods of Tirisfal and toward the Western Plaguelands. I remember the atmosphere clearly, with its slightly dead blue-green tinge. I remember seeing something in the sky, but not sure if it was the moon or the sun. As I rode the mount through the woods, I went past a ruined human or scarlet tower, but I didn't see any enemies or creatures anywhere.

When I got to the area of Tirisfal that is closest to the Western Plaguelands, it was more like a volcanic area, more like something I'd expect from Cataclysm than a classic area. At first this bit was sandy with shrubs here and there, somewhat desert-like, but there were burnt trees and courses of lava. I remember it was day time but as I went further into this zone it got darker. It felt like it had been an extremely long ride from Tirisfal and I can't recall all the details of the journey. I do remember a number of different passing thoughts, mostly about potentially being attacked, but very vaguely.

Going along a road in this zone, I headed towards some tunnel I saw before on my map interface. To the north of the tunnel entrance was a ruined building. It looked like an Alliance fort or barracks, but it was supposed to be a hospital in the dream? Someone, I can't remember who, suggested I go there, but I said I'd already been there or something.

As I entered the tunnel, which had a car-tunnel feel to it, I noticed another player riding their mount come up behind me. I think it was an undead but he didn't seem hostile and he had this orange hat that I remember from early quests in TBC. He had a strange blue mount that I can't really remember very well. I checked my character panel and it said my mount speed was 140% with all my bonuses, but this guy still managed to slightly faster, probably at about 160%. He overtook me and eventually I lost sight of him.

On the other side of the tunnel I explored a little rock island surrounded by lava courses and I heard the distinct sound of a character in stealth nearby. I dismounted and tried to find the player; it was a tauren druid prowling in cat form. I attacked and used kidney shot, a rogue ability; and before the stun ended, I used a cat form ability too and used a different stun, not really giving the druid a chance to fight back. He took a ton of damage, or what felt like it but eventually died. Oddly enough, the form effect should have ended for him at that point, but didn't, so the corpse looked like the cat form and not the tauren form. I realised while attacking that he was level 137 or something, which then made me realise I was 19 levels below that, and that was why it took so long to kill him.

Other stuff happened, not sure what. I think I used some other druid forms but the next thing I remember I'm at my old home, as "myself", in the downstairs part. Mom and other people are there, but I'm not sure who. There was this man with no top on, a dream character and I think he was injured? This part of the dream went on for a while but I've forgotten most of the details.

Dream Fragment:

Something about power going off, but in a weird way, where only a few things went off. I think I was in the kitchen?

---

Notes:
- In the dream, my character level didn’t seem to be well defined but the mixed usage of abilities could have been a clear dream sign, as well as the dream-created volcanic landscapes.

- Like with my other dreams that involve old known locations, this was also one of those dreams where the dream mind is starting to take more liberties with how the places look. This is interesting because recently I was thinking that the reason those old places were being so altered in dreams was a result of not visiting them for a long time, but I have played WoW recently enough that this theory doesn’t really seem to make as much sense anymore.

- Plenty of somewhat obvious dream signs in the last few months, but not being obvious enough for me to pick up on them yet I guess. But that and some other general things about dreams through these last few months have been giving me a sense that something is progressing in a positive way.

- The topless and injured man may have simply been a figment brought about by a show I watched for the first time the previous night, but his presence really was completely out of place in that dream, there was nothing else to tie the two contexts together.

- I’m remembering now that in that part of the dream it was a bright morning daytime, though only a small bit of it came through into the living room, where I was.

- The WoW dream was typical for a game dream, I didn’t have the sense of sitting at a desk or anything, just completely existing in the game, even despite the use of third person camera. In a way this is not too different from how I feel when playing games I’m immersed in anyway; usually it just feels like an extension of self, more than anything else. But it does make me feel that I’m almost too used to the sense of altered reality, which is maybe why I normally don’t pick up on dream signs that when I’m awake I consider to be pretty obvious.

Not been able to keep recall very well or make notes in the morning for the last few days because of pain issues.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was at some sort of zen gathering, for a dream-imagined relative. She was going to have this ceremony that was supposed to strengthen the bond between her and this baby brother of hers or something.

I remember the area was on a green and grassy rolling hill. It had a fair bit of an angle on it. There were some small trees, not much bigger than a person and there were some sort of carpets or rugs laid out in a few places.

It was night time? But it was bright, I think from a full moon. I remember looking at the sky and seeing it in the night and then lower to the right I saw a tower. It looked like a Japanese hill castle tower.

There were some people up there on its walls, some kind of avians, like from Starbound.

Next thing I remember, I’m up there and planning a sneak attack with some other people against the avians to take some treasure they had up there.

Transition? Maybe a different dream but it felt to be in sequence and similar context.

I remember L and his childhood friend J. We were walking around a lower area, possibly next to that hill from before. It was night. We came up to some metal grated stone structure. Beyond the metal bars I could see a wooden treasure chest and a tunnel that led into that area.

I looked to the left and saw another similar stone structure, also with metal bars but not all along it’s opening. There were two minotaurs in there and I attacked them but I don’t remember how I dealt with them exactly.

The rest of the details are missing but I vaguely remember being in a 3 seat van with J and L at some point.

Dream Fragment:

I was using my tablet. I was painting, trying to replicate an effect I saw in waking life of a painting that was just in the background of a tv show.

I was trying to paint waves in the water in the same detailed way as that painting. It wasn’t going very well though and even in the dream I realised I was going about it the wrong way.

---

No notes for now, might edit later.

Some fragments. Recall seemed better for the second and third dreams on waking up.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was in the kitchen. It was a bit dark but not night time. Like very early morning just after sun rise, and with the blinds rolled down. I remember standing by the fridge, naked I think? I remember seeing my feet and legs. For some reason, I could hear in my head what I thought at the time to be a theme song for the TV show called Roswell, a show I never watched myself, but I know of it. I don't actually remember what that music sounded like but it seemed familiar in the dream, in a way that makes me think that it had nothing to do with that show, but I'll have to try and find it after writing this DJ.

Wedged between the fridge and the counter it is adjacent to, I remember noticing one of the wooden grave markers H's dad was working on yesterday when we went there. The cross was upside down and it looked like we had just shoved it in there in a hurry to make some room in the kitchen. The fridge is a fridge on top and freezer on the bottom and I remember seeing the logo somewhat distinctly in the dream.

No idea how this dream went on or ended.

Dream Fragment:

I was entering some sort of supermarket, it felt like it was underground. There were quite a few people here, seemed like a popular place. Looked a bit like the cheap supermarket I go to but for whatever reason my old friend from university, R, was walking along with me. We both had a trolley.

I was very confused by the layout, first there were mostly energy drinks and then soft drinks. I think I commented on them being crap but I also felt hungry more than anything else. We continued on and eventually we got to a very odd bit, where I had to watch what other people were doing to understand. There was like a sort of circular checkpoint thing that we had to go into in queues. I grabbed some big and fresh looking pears I spotted to my right, and apparently some bananas too. I knew immediately the pears would be sweet, as I prefer them, and not at all wooden. There were some fake metal barriers to enforce queues.

I got to the centre of this checkpoint thing. There was a woman on a swivel chair? She was wearing a cap but had curled hair tucked into it or something. She was in the middle of this four-section rounded island with shop scanner things on each of the four sections. I remember giving her the fruits or placing them down on the metal/glass surface.

She scanned the fruit somehow and I continued off away from the checkpoint thing.

Dream Fragment:

Some kind of mix of GTA and other games like Deus Ex. I remember being on a completely unknown city and having a map divided into levels, like there used to be in Zelda's dungeons. 1F,2F, etc.

There were some ghoul like enemies at some point and a UDamage pickup, which when I tried getting, some quick imp or rat thing got it and scurried off.

I remember being on some sort of snow bike and using a turbo mode that activated an orange energy saw and killing some of these ghouls. This was an enclosed area, with many narrow paths and with an underground feel to it. At the end of it I found a portal marked by an inverse encircled pentagram, which was a path to hell. I decided to not go through yet but would come back to it when I felt stronger.

Then I was outside and it was night time. Everything was brightly lit. I remember fighting some guys at a bridge over a wide channel of water that looked like it had very strong currents, as it was quite foamy and uneven.

Much earlier in the dream there was an area of sort of open field but I don't really remember any details. Too tired to write much more.

---

Notes:
- I'm not entirely sure what prompted the appearance of both the cross and the pentagram (both inverted) in two separate dreams, but yesterday H's dad was making about twelve of these cross-shaped grave markers. I remember asking if they were consecrated or blessed in any way once they were done. I was told that there's no point, since they are just temporary markers. This might account for the marker's appearance in my dream, as I had some interest in them since he was basically working on them all day and we were there for most of it.

- The third dream was a mix of many, many games, far too many to actually describe in reasonable detail. But the part with the UDamage and the inverted pentagram was most definitely based mostly on: DOOM, Daikatana and Unreal (Tournament). All of these have some themes in common, but the game engines are also all quite similar in some aspects. Hell and unholy motifs such as ghouls are closely related to DOOM of course and they also feature in UT. Some time ago I was working on a cathedral level for UT, but abandoned the project due to its complexity for my current skill level. The level featured an underground hellish portal that would take players to the top of the level.

- The Christian-type symbols probably also made their appearances because last night I spent a fair bit of time speaking to H about how I have often felt, and often still feel, because of my constant pain issues. There is a somewhat subconscious link between pain and some version of hell, for me.

- In the second dream, I seem to remember R was wearing his typical leather jacket. I don't remember seeing his face much in the dream.

- In that same dream, many of the dream characters seemed to be some type or another of friends or acquaintances I used to have. My mom appeared in that dream at some point, near the end, along with some dreamed up ogre-like uncle of some kind.

Dreams that I made note of early today but that I'm only writing on the DJ here at night.

---

Dream Fragment:

Much longer than just this bit and a lot of detail is missing. Was with my family at some building, more specifically, with my parents and maybe siblings. We were there because of me, I was waiting to be given permission to use this facility's reactor-powered super-computer.

One of mom's sisters (M) was there . H was there but was a blend between himself and my oldest sibling. I remember we were waiting in some sort of lobby. It was sunny, there was a lot of glass. It was a fairly modern-style building from what I can remember. Eventually, a woman came through into the room and requested my presence. I followed her and walked through some halls and then through a large indoors space, like an aircraft hangar or an industrial warehouse. When we were in one of these larger spaces, the woman, who I remember was formally dressed (i.e. had some sort of secretarial position), said that they were going to give me the OK to use their computer.

Apparently I wanted to use this computer to "hack" some other reactor-powered super-computer of the same sort. In the dream I already knew I had permission from the owners of that second computer to do this. My reaction to when she gave me the OK was something of surprise and I felt happy. I told her I'd be right back and jogged back to the lobby quickly to grab a few things. Mostly some papers, A4 prints of the schematics for the other reactor? Looked like amplifier schematics like the ones I often see H use.

In the dream I knew that some favour I pulled was responsible for the people who owned this place to allow me to do this, though there seemed to be no animosity with anyone and there was a calm and polite atmosphere.

I remember there was a lot of dialogue in this dream but I remember very little of it in detail, usually one of the first things to get forgotten. I went back to the woman after grabbing the papers. I remember being shown into a room where I then used some sort of computer terminal and then gained physical access to the other computer's library. But it was literally and physically manifested in front of me, above the terminal.

I looked through the books. I remember chatting to this lady since she was there to supervise me, mostly small talk. I couldn't remember which of these files (the books) that H was interested in, so for whatever reason I asked for someone to go and fetch my oldest sibling (L). L arrived and immediately recognised the book. L took it and I wondered how we'd return it, since I realised in that moment this was a one-time thing but we were still obliged to return the file.

Then I said to L: "make sure you get everything you want, because we will never have access to this again." I remember thinking or feeling that the other books on that shelf were filled with irreplaceable knowledge.

The dream went on for a bit but I don't remember much. Some visions of the reactors? I told the lady about how I got permission to do all of this.

Dream Fragment:

A different dream. In space, much shorter dream. Strategy game like Homeworld but could manage planets and space stations too. Mix of Freelancer too? Don't remember the visuals anymore. Woke up after this dream.

Dream Fragment:

Fell back asleep and recalled this single fragment. Was helping T build some sort of organ console. The console didn't look right. It was askew? But it was on purpose apparently. The manuals were angled at 90 degrees and sloped on a 30 degree arc. I remember this took place in T's room. There was a light on and the room was dark otherwise, somewhat as expected really.

Mom was there, talking to T I think.

---

Some notes:
- I did remember more conversational detail when I woke up and wrote down the first dream on my phone but the memory has since long left as I finish writing this DJ entry.
- The thing with the shelf and the books being the other computer's file system was very unusual. It was like an allegory, but somewhat unnecessary.
- For whatever reason, these few dreams I had all had H, T and L mixed in some sense as if they were all the same character. Although I can draw some similarities between them, like the bookshelf thing, I'm not sure why it was almost made obvious in the dream. Normally my less conscious thoughts don't manifest themselves in dreams in such an obvious way, probably since I already recognise all these elements consciously anyway.
- The secretary figure is starting to become a recurring dream character in a sense. Feels like a sort of formal projection, as a character, of what I would consider my anima to be. Last year there were some similar appearances. Usually black hair, tidy, possibly glasses and a smooth but not perfect face. A slight bit of attitude or something in body posture, but in a relaxed way. Takes herself seriously.

- A note on the above; I have taken the Jungian archetypes into a sort of personally meaningful way as I do with symbols in general, so that they have specific meanings to myself, which are often a bit more distant from their original meanings. This accounts for why the appearance of these archetypes varies, sometimes dramatically. But the key identifier for them is usually that they are key characters in the dream and that they are not related to people I know, and seem to be more disjointed from the other characters in a dream, usually.

- T's room was more or less as I remember last seeing it. The sense of any unpleasant smell didn't seem to be there, but I remember feeling uncomfortable being in the room.

Just a dream fragment. Recall was a bit poor this past night and the night before, maybe because I've been a bit restless.

---

Dream Fragment:

I'm at an alternate version of the big square in my old home town. An older version of it, I think? I got in a car with one of my aunts (B). It was dark. We drove somewhere underground, where it was also particularly dark but there were a few lights here and there at foot level or something. There was a green hue to everything.

The underground area was like a tunnel at first, a bit like some of the subway tunnels in the town. But then it became narrower and more like a sewer of some kind.

Then I remember being on foot on my own. There were narrow concrete straits over darkness below. There was green-ish looking water coming out of cylindrical openings in some of the concrete walls.

---

Notes:

- Although I didn't realise it on waking up or during the dream, it made sense that the underground area resembled the subway tunnels, because under that square in waking life is where the station is.
- I remember having some conversation with my aunt, but can't even remember what about.

Some dream fragments. There was a third one but I have such a faint and vague memory of it, not even sure where I'd start. I practically lost the other ones while getting up but made sure to keep my eyes closed as much as possible until I could write here, which helped.

---

Dream Fragment:

I remember being at some sort of concrete structure. I'm not sure if I was "me" but a couple of other people were here too, I think one of them was that Torres guy from NCIS. This place was dark and there was a massive abyss right in front of us. Across this abyss was another flat area made of concrete and there were some soldiers there. They were holding us here or something and they shouted that we should stay put.

The soldiers got on a platform and it started moving down very fast. They disappeared from sight. Somewhere down there was some light, but it must have been a literal mile or more away. Then some more soldiers appeared but this time they didn't wait for the platform and just jumped down where the platform shaft area was. I was intrigued but at some point in the dream I simply "knew" that at the bottom was a special fluid that would break any fall, no matter from how high.

Torres like the idea of just jumping across and into that specific area. I felt it was too risky. It was a long way down and there was no way to aim ourselves properly and the gap between the two concrete areas was quite wide. But he got on some sort of pole hanging from our side and got closer to the other side, hanging just over the middle. Then some soldiers came back up on the platform and noticed. They started shouting at him and warning him to stop. He ignored them and now he grabbed onto some rope that was hanging from the ceiling. That's as much as I remember clearly for this fragment.

I do remember there were no light sources. We were very deep underground most certainly, but somehow we had a light radius of our own, like in RPGs where the characters just give off light...

Dream Fragment:

I don't remember how I got there but I arrived at a small lab/office place. This dream was somewhat vivid, more than the other one. There were two researchers, wearing labcoats, and one of them greeted me. He seemed a bit uninterested at first but then he saw my boots. They were covered in some sort of pale golden sand. I realised I hadn't noticed this myself until that moment and he became very interested. He went over to a counter and showed me some tins with rounded caps.

The caps were all a shade of gold or tan. He asked me to see which one I thought was closest. I selected four of the tins first just as a guess. Then I held them and made their coloured cap be over my right boot in my vision. The first wasn't it, too orange. The second and third one seemed similar, the fourth one was too dark but the right hue. I compared between the second and third against the sand and decided the third one was the closest. He seemed happy with this and I felt somewhat happy to help. I made a comment saying "well at least I can definitely tell that my skill at recognising shades correctly has improved". I genuinely felt this was true in that moment and realise now that it was indeed a very accurate test of my skill in this.

The other researcher was just doing something on his own over on another counter but I don't remember what. Oddly enough, despite looking at my feet, can't be certain what the floor was like. Some sort of plastic tiles? Maybe wood. But square shapes. The counters were an off white on the top and a light stained wood on the cabinets. There were a couple of windows to the outside and I made note of the fact that it was daytime outside, but the room was quite brightly lit anyway with some fluorescent lamps that actually gave off a warm colour for once.

This whole dream bit felt like it was in sequence of the previous one or another one between them.

---

Side notes:

- It could possibly be the first time while dreaming where I had to use a skill that I'd use for painting in waking life. For me this is a particularly good sign because for a long time I've wanted that context to come over into dreams in some form.
- The researchers wearing labcoats were clearly dreamsigns that I missed. The labcoat is a dreamsign I successfully managed to insert into my dreams as a dreamsign a while back, I think last year or the year before.
- The dust on my boots reminded me very much of gold powder in the dream. In the dream I had a much clearer notion of where I had been previously, which was relevant for that context.
- Despite looking at my boots and remembering them very clearly as the black leather army-type boots I have in waking life, I only vaguely remember my trousers and can't really say which ones they were. It seems odd that my boots are the only detail I remember clearly from looking down, despite the fact that in the dream everything was the same level of vividness.
- I do remember I was wearing some sort of dark hoodie in that dream. I remember it because I remember the sensation of having the sleeves pulled up, something I often do if I'm indoors.
- Don't have much at all to make note of from the first dream since many details are vague now, but the fall-breaking fluid definitely made me think of stuff from Portal and from Satisfactory.

Had a few dreams but only remembering a couple of fragments.

---

Dream Fragment:

I was playing Dune 2000, doing some sort of special single-player mission. I was struggling a bit with the micromanagement because in this scenario the game started me out with three separate bases each on their own rock islands fairly far from each other, on the south-east side of the map. The map had very large expanses of sand (I could remember seeing a preview in a menu) but also had a lot of cliffs and ruins and old walls.

I remember some of the game's music playing a bit, but even though I remember the interface looking like Harkonnen, my units didn't all seem to match my faction. The enemy was managing to send some engineer units to capture some of my buildings and this was annoying me and something else had also gone wrong so I think I restarted the level. I went back to a menu where I could tweak something and I was tweaking some starting radar thing that allowed me to see further into the fog of war initially.

This second time became weirder, kind of fast too. My vision was more inside the actual game now and despite this being a top-down view game, I was able to somehow control the view and see everything in 3D. I was telling some units to patrol so engineers would stop taking my buildings but this was being wonky. I don't think the game even has a patrol function. Again I was struggling with the three separate bases issue. There were many units on the map and I could see stuff going on in the minimap this time. The game was spawning waves of Zerglings and other stuff from Starcraft I and they were ambushing some unit groups I'd sent out to try and make small attacks on the enemy.

Then some of my spice deposits were running out and more wasn't appearing fast enough. I was afraid the harvesters would be getting destroyed by the worms soon. Then all of a sudden, a bit north-northeast from my middle base some giant walker thing with fleshy tendrils and orange sort of growths on it was approaching and I think I let out a swear. I sent units to attack it because it looked like it had loads of health, and eventually they were managing to take it down. But now the game was spawning so many enemies at the same time, I couldn't keep up at all and was going to be defeated soon.

Dream Fragment:

Was in a parliament. It was dark and a bit desaturated. But the house was full. I was right in front of some middle bit where some person speaks. And this man was there in a suit with no tie or bow, he was speaking about Europe and the future, but I can't remember what he was saying exactly. He seemed happy about not so good circumstances that he would mention. This made me feel uncomfortable somehow, on a less conscious level. It also somehow made me realise a bit where I was standing in the room, but I don't think anyone cared.

I think there was some daylight coming in from the other end of the room, probably why everything looked so grey and dim.

---

No notes for now.