DarkestDarkness

Non-dream stuff - A couple of non-lucid fragments. Had initially woken up at 8 with no dream recall and then slept with the weak intent of dreaming a bit and woke up at 9 with these.

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Fragment 1:
I remember being in a house, it was well-decorated and it was my house. There was a window to the outside and there were cars passing by but they looked like they were from the 50s.

There was a woman here and I was talking to her. We were discussing her situation, and the fact that she had no husband. In the dream context I was not in the role of my "self" but of a character, and my dream self had a wife who'd passed away years ago. I was telling this woman how she was "no less of a woman to the Republic for having no husband". In the dream context the Republic referred to the government, as if the Roman empire had lasted up to this point.

I remember she was sat on a couch which was red, but I don't recall its shape; and I walked around the room as we discussed this issue. I don't remember what either of us were wearing.

Fragment 2:
I was walking in a forest. It was definitely Autumn/Fall; though the forest had a lot of canopy which covered from any light, even in a large clearing area I was walking through, there was sunlight and it was orange, as were all the leaves both on the trees and the ground. I distinctly remember the feeling of walking through the leaves with my feet, but do not recall what I was wearing.

I got up to a little mound and there was a ramp that looked like a bridge that had never been built, there being a tiny bit of road but then a lot of large cobblestone flags scattered around. The stones were very round as those found in lakes and they were a brown-ish colour.

I went over the mound and on the other side of the bridge thing and there was some sort of metal bin; it was square and again, brown and orange in colour. It was upside down and I tipped it up toward this ramp and I remember either hearing a voice or thinking about it and how it reminded me of a trap you'd set to catch small animals.

Sure enough, shortly after as I got up to go back the way I came, I saw a rabbit, its fur creamy and brown; I thought it would escape but I got close to it and remarked to it about its cuteness and touched its head, surprised by the fact that the rabbit was allowing me to get that close. As I pet the rabbit it turned almost cartoony with a smile. When I was walking back the way I came, I saw a few more rabbits of the same likeness.

Fragment 3:
I remember being at a store, it felt like the store under my childhood home. I was buying 3 or 4 things, though I only remember one of them was a cream soda in a beer-type bottle. I was waiting at the till to pay but nobody was coming, and then two other customers were there waiting too, cramping out the space with little regard for personal space, especially with the shopping, since it's a tiny till.

Someone came to take our payments but even though I was certain I was there first, she served this other guy first and then me.

I don't remember the part about paying and etc. I do remember opening the cream soda bottle with my hand (i.e. without a bottle opener, which I'm not confident I'd possibly be able to do), the metal cap feeling soft and not at all sharp when I did it. I poured it into a large glass, like one I have in my kitchen in waking life, and then tasting it; it tasted like fizzy cream soda, but very very weakly so. In the dream I concluded I'd poured water in first, but I doubted this conclusion because I'd emptied the bottle, which would have filled the glass.

Fragment 4:
A very odd, short, fragment where I was flipping through a book on perspective and it showed foreshortening using a baby's hands and legs, the next page over being something about rainbow dash and a diagram of anatomical orifices.

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Notes:

• The sudden appearance of and then noticing of more rabbits is directly related to my waking-life experience of observing animals; usually I won't spot any for a while, but once I spot the first one, spotting all the others becomes much easier and almost accidental.
• When I woke up, the rabbit reminded me of the competition KarlaB18 is running, because it is the image the fast team has, though a different colour fur.
• The room in the first fragment felt more like the lobby to a bigger part of the house, but it also felt like a living room, as it mostly had displays and a bust statue or two.
• When I tasted the cream soda I genuinely felt disappointed by the fact it was so watery. I was strongly expecting a nice creamy flavour in the dream. Now I have a craving for cream soda...

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Scoring thus far:
+ Previous Score: 0.5
+ Recall a non-lucid fragment * 4 (@0.5ea): 2.0
+ Help someone in need: 1.0 (The woman in the first fragment)

= Total score thus far: 3.5

Non-dream stuff - Still catching up a bit on dream recall, woke up at about 7 and then again at 9, recalling a tiny fragment of a non-lucid.

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Fragment:
I don't remember the location, and I can't visualise it very well, but there was a little girl; she wanted something, either from me or someone else. I needed a suit's pants for some reason, to be able to get into some place; for some reason I had decided in the dream that the pants and any top would be fine, even though to get into this place most people had a full suit.

I vaguely remember a dock or a quay, maybe a large ship, but I don't remember water or open space.

Can't remember enough visual details to put a coherent scene together and afraid that random memories are mixing together with any potential visuals.

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Notes; not directly related to the dream this time:

• I spent a few days away and couldn't exercise my dream recall during those days because of my morning schedules.
• My left leg's pain is being quite distracting, but not helped by the fact that before I came to write this DJ entry I had already been moving around the house a fair bit (getting more exposed to daylight and forgetting details).
• When I woke up I was thinking about the October competition, and have been for the last couple of days. I have a printed bit of paper with my personal goals on my bedside table now.

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Scoring thus far:
+ Previous score: 0
+ Recall a non-lucid fragment: 0.5

= Total score thus far: 0.5

Non-dream stuff - woke up at about 9:00, remembering one long(ish) non-lucid dream. Some details lost.

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Sequence:
I remember being in a variation of my current home. I was in the kitchen. I remember a big man, he was a friend of ours; I think he was of some african ethnicity but he wasn't that dark - he had short hair and brown eyes and big hands; his girlfriend, who was of similar ethnicity was there too? She had long curly hair and brown eyes also. I think the kitchen lights may have been on, but it was day outside, maybe clear but very early.

I remember they were talking and then it turned into an argument and I joined his girlfriend's side of the argument for some reason. Then I asked him to leave, and I realised I was a bit angry, so I immediately calmed myself down, touched him in the arm, as he was upset too, and I said "I'm sorry about that." - then everyone was a bit calmer and for some reason he had this bag full of chestnuts covered in sugar that had been deep-fried. They looked delicious but I commented that they looked nice, but unfortunately my mouth didn't agree because of all the sugar.

I tried to make light of the situation somehow but either way, I then went through the main hall; the front door was open and as I walked out, the scenery was different from what it should be; our side of the street was still a row of terraced houses but the opposite side was just forest/green, and the road was wider (2 lane instead of single lane) and the pavement was much wider. My partner was parked up to the right in the car. To the left was some sort of factory (maybe tire factory, there is one where I live, but not that close).

The factory was not open, as all its (visitor?) parking spaces outside were empty. I thought it had closed for the day, though the dream-time seemed like morning, my assumption was end of day time in the dream. Opposite to the factory parking spaces was a wide bit where a bus/coach could stop. Then the road did a curve as it went on.

My partner was on the phone and had sunglasses on in the car. Opposite me, the other side of the road was some Korean man, he smiled a lot I think. Some children were playing too, I remember a little girl for some reason. I remember my mood outside was a driven one, I was looking for parking for the man inside the house, and I concluded there was none apart from the factory's spaces, so I walked back in and was going to tell him, but I had some doubts it was "ok" to use those spaces, but I think I could hear my partner's voice saying it was fine, because everyone had left. (another hint that the dream time was end of day, really)

Transition of some kind or missing detail...

I remember being with a group of people, my dad was one of the people but I don't remember who else, I think just dream characters. Of note was a man older than my dad. We were in a mall (this could have been a more obvious dream-sign on its own, plus the presence of my dad) and then we went up some concrete stairs and we were in an overhang tunnel, that went over some street or something. It wasn't very long but had angular corners. I walked next to my dad and as we were crossing, he pulled some sort of lever and the tunnel bridge started to rotate its middle section; I looked behind to see if the other DCs were able to get on.

We walked to the other end and there was a stairwell down. Then I remember being outside of there and it was like some sort of campus... I looked around (I can't remember my motivations or intents) and ended up going down some more stairs into a dark place, a subway. The tracks were at the same level as the platform, i.e. there was no stone/concrete lip over the tracks. There were quite a few people at this tiny platform that was no bigger than a small room. The tunnels were equally dark, maybe brighter somehow. I think I had stepped on someone that was sitting down at some point, though I don't remember apologising, for some reason. I couldn't see them, still.

Then I went down more stairs, to a similar sort of platform, also dark and small with several people waiting. I realised I was in the wrong place "that's the yellow line... I want the blue line" I thought, after seeing a yellow line along the tracks. I went up a level again and concluded that platform wasn't right either. I had the impression that each track was for the same line but went opposite directions.

I got out to the surface again, this campus place, but everything looked... fake, almost plastic-like. I walked along the pavements between the grassy bits and there were people around. I reached a point that had one of those blocks you can hit from Super Mario. The dream started to look a bit Minecraft-y, with voids in certain spots on the ground, sky visible. I fell down by accident into a small void pit but fortunately there were some stone blocks there. I climbed up the opposite side and continued walking.

Dream details are starting to go really fuzzy now, remaining memories of particular note only being one of a sword or something and of walking into a different place.

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Notes:

• When I was thinking why I didn't want the chestnuts the reason was a valid waking-life reason, as I currently have some mouth ulcers that I really shouldn't "feed".
• It is peculiar that chestnuts appeared, especially prepared in such an unusual way. I haven't had chestnuts in quite a while, but I haven't been thinking about them. It may be an automatic craving, as this is about the right time of the year, when we used to have chestnuts at my childhood home.
• The Korean man was a waking-life remnant because a friend of ours was discussing the North Korean leader in passing conversation last night.
• The subway, tracks, etc all were very obvious dream-signs that I missed as always. As I was thinking about that part when I was writing it, I was realising that when I've seen trains recently (mostly in games) I've never remembered to do a RC.

Note: Technically, this wasn't a dream. Not entirely sure why I felt like putting on the DJ. Last night I was listening to the OST from STRAFE through some old headphones (80s I think) I have which make me almost unable to hear/feel the room if no music is playing, and I just had my eyes closed while listening.

The soundtrack feels a bit "melancholic" to me in general, but others might not think of it that way. I wasn't trying to think of anything in particular and some imagery formed, though with little vividness, hardly any more vivid than regular imagination. Forgot some of the details, since this was last night before going to sleep.

I couldn't recall any actual dreams today, my focus on waking up wasn't in the right place and ironically I'd forgotten about intents last night.

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As I was listening to second half of the OST, I had thoughts come and go of "darkness". Not vivid but dream-like imagery of being pulled down by my "dream" arm into pits - swarms of spiders and insects would appear and I wondered why it was that I could never have visualised a scene like this without feeling fear or horror in the past. Though the imagery wasn't strong, I still felt some disgust at some of the insects, particularly big ones.

This repeated itself in different ways a few times mixed with other passing thoughts I can't remember, related to the imagery. I remember thinking that this probably wasn't what I was "looking for" and thinking that it was interesting that a dream-like setting had formed.

Then as the soundtrack got into the last quarter the thoughts went sort of into the actual in-game area that the track would play in, though the imagery was still relatively weak vs an actual dream, I could sort of feel a dream-body and started remembering the black lizard from another of my DJ entries.
I started wanting to spot him but instead I realised that I was that lizard this time, seeing from first-person, but wearing a labcoat (which is one of my artificial dream-signs) and though I couldn't visualise clearly, I tried to do hand/finger reality checks; counting wasn't possible due to the low duration of physical memory and lack of "vision" - but passing my clawed fingers through my other hand's palm worked.

Though I was fully aware of the music being outside this and the fact that I was sitting on a chair, I felt it was important to try and do a RC to see if my mind would agree with what I was wanting to do. The place the "dream" body was in, was indeed dream-like, despite being awake.

As the music progressed I remember running through the halls of Athena (the in-game area) as if it were in the actual game, getting "deeper" into the area, "looking" down at my "dream" legs, noticing that they were scaly and black and that the feet were dinosaur-like, with 3 front claws and 1 rear claw or something like that; the in-game enemies were appearing and I attacked them with the claws I had and my large reptilian mouth, eating some of the smaller enemies and making particular note of all the blood that was showering from the enemies, just like it would in the game. I wondered, was this the darkness I was looking for? I concluded it wasn't. I tried to taste the blood but the sense wasn't strong enough since I could still feel my actual mouth too. I tried using the channeling effect from Warframe with my attacks but while this did disintegrate the enemies into energy, more seemed to appear from the dispersed energy.

As the music got to the last track I had on the list, which is the music for the final room in Athena, I realised I was standing where the boss would be. There was the player character down below in the chamber; he was autonomous and attacked the boss control room tower and shot towards me too, not penetrating the glass with the bullets. For some reason I taunted him by licking the glass, noticing the tongue to not be reptilian-like but being long, with somewhat better visuals than before. Then I remember breaking the glass and crawling down the wall as a lizard would and going for the player character and killing him; the hordes of enemies that were attacking him turned to me instead and I remember fighting them and soon after the music ended and the imagery ended, as if I'd" woken" up, despite having been "awake" the whole time.

Edit: Forgot to remove private entry checkbox, so changed that. (I sometimes check it so I don't post by accident when I'm sleepy and everything is half-typed ).

Edit2: Added a name to the title of the DJ entry so I can find it more easily when I'm looking for it.

Non-dream stuff - had a couple of non-lucid dreams I remember in some detail. Chronological order slightly forgotten.

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Dream fragment:
I was playing some sort of space game, I could see in third-person view the ship I was controlling. Though I distinctly remember being "in" the game, I know my partner was watching me play, and I was in a system that had 3 jump gates to other stars; the jumpgates looked a bit Stargate-like, but two were coloured red and one was green. I wanted to go in one of the red ones. The system was very dark, there was a red giant star at its centre and when I arrived at the gates (that for some reason were clustered together) there were 2 ships, which were part of local military.

I remember using the jumpgate, though I don't remember the transition special effects, and when I got to the next system, it felt like it was a bit more dangerous. Visually it was confusing, I was struggling with the controls all of a sudden and the field of view adjustment kept changing for no reason. There was a blue giant star, and a regular yellow star; I remember some nebulae, blue, too, but there was something odd about the "skybox"* for the system.

In my controls struggle I accidentally started warping, backwards, somehow. The warp got faster and faster and I could see a "ul" units measurement at the bottom of the interface, going up quickly from 0.x to ~700. I managed to stop it and was now in a different system. I remember commenting to myself "oh, I forgot that worked that way", regarding the system travelling feature of the warp. It reminds me now of the warp mechanic in Eliteangerous.

Then I used it again and went forwards this time but steering at the same time, but when I warped out, I was in a planet with my ship, in the middle of a mega city, so I had to quickly try and maneuver up through openings I could see.

I remember getting past the atmosphere though I don't remember what happened next.

Dream sequence:
On a plane, with my partner. I don't think I was too happy about it; but we were landing, and we were landing in a street somewhere in France. This was the planned destination and the landing worked and stopped more than few hundred feet away from the nearest building.

We got out and I think we went to a flat somewhere, I think it was my aunt's and I remember some sort of interaction with my aunt before the dream started. But all I remember from the flat was that it was like our real kitchen and there was a bathroom. The bathroom was filthy, there was trimmed hair everywhere; there was a slight yellow tinge on things, not from urine or anything, as far as I can gather. There were no strong smells. But it felt filthy. I was trying to clean the toilet's rim with some paper, for some reason, and it was taking very long.

There was a transition and the next thing I remember is being at a supermarket in the same city, and I'm picking up what looks like a sweetener capsule dispenser thing, but instead, they have pictures of great monuments on them. I pick one that has a Great Pyramid, and I remember thinking or commenting to someone near me, "with this we can build our own pyramid... seems it takes about 3.8 acres of land, so we just need to get some 4 acres of land somewhere".

I walk to one of those self-checkout things, only carrying this little thing, and I scan it but I'm a little confused as to how things work and take a little while to understand where to place it; then I do, and I'm about to pay, but this other French guy about my age or younger starts using the same machine as I'm using, and I speak to him in English saying "excuse me, could you help me pay?" and he doesn't even look at me, which I feel to be rude. In the dream I have the distinct feeling they ignored English on purpose. I somehow manage to pay with my card, which I took out of my wallet blindly, but confirmed to be the card I wanted by the 4 last numbers, which were accurate to waking life as I remember.

I leave the shop and go down some street. Of note, I go past a man painting some sort of tall vertical canvases, in his own shop, but do not talk or engage with him. Down this street I am looking for a suitable land for this pyramid I want to build. I find some plaza and some ruins, and in the dream I think that because there are some Aztec-looking ruins I could just use them as a base for the pyramid... It's a micro steppe pyramid in its own right, this ruin, and I remember a hole that would be the stairwell. It is exceedingly dark in here, but I can see somehow. There is a different hole next to a wall, big enough for any grown man to slide in, but I do not satisfy my curiosity and walk away instead. Something felt odd but that wall opening, like it would go down forever.

I remember going up some street and then seeing some big building with a hand-painted sign that said:

"2 any artist;
60(something) (something);
214 accomplished artist"

or something to this effect. I got annoyed reading the sign. The numbers were value/money, and I felt that it was unfair to unknown artists. I commented something out aloud and realise that I'm standing next to the shop with that man from before, with the tall cyllinders that he painted. He said to me "unfortunately that's how it works; you can see how much work I have here - because it is exotic and unusual, I am not considered to be good or accomplished" or something like this. His shop was literally cluttered with all of his artistic work, some of it looked quite nice, some of it was indeed a bit unusual.

There was another dream after this but I've forgotten most of the details, apart from a teen boy being naked and antagonising me, who I punched in the face, though he didn't back down and just kept being annoying. There was a little girl but she seemed sad, she had a little pink dress.

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Notes:

• *The skybox is traditionally a scaled up 3D element that keeps the exact same position as the player and makes up the far-distance objects that can be represented either with 2D sprites or low resolution 3D models.
• The comments of the other artist reflect partly the basic feel I have about art's value in general.
• My partner was present at some points in the second dream but I don't remember the interactions between us.
• I have been to France only once, when I was a kid, and had the possibility of going again when I was around 16, but didn't.
• In the dream I just couldn't understand why at the supermarket the guy was rude to me. I was being polite and asking for help to get out of his way. But it later occurred to me in the dream that if I'd used my native language instead he wouldn't have been so rude, so it felt like it was a French/English animosity thing.
• I don't know where the 3.8 acres figure came from (it seems very specific but for no reason) in the dream for the Great Pyramid's base area; but checking quickly has revealed to me that the Pyramid's base is about 13 acres, about 3.25 times my 4 acres land estimate in the dream. I do not have any intuitive understanding of the actual area taken by an acre in waking life, so if there was any accuracy at all, it would have been a surprise.

Non-dream stuff - Had a few non-lucids, mostly only remember the details for one sequence, since I didn't come to write on the journal straight away.

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Fragment:
I was in a game and I fought two girls that were teamed up, over a wooden planks bridge or something like that; the landscape was pretty blocky in general as I remember it, and these girls had picked/were characters that were really strong together, due to the way their abilities synergised with each other. I mostly struggled to deal significant damage to them, as they recovered or blocked it and eventually I remember falling in a low pit and getting cornered and killed. I don't remember what kind of abilities or weapons I was using.

Dream:
I was in the same game, and with this dream I remember the format more clearly: it was a player-versus-player online game. It was night but very clear as there was a bright moon light, and many of us, the players, were on a rocky slope upward toward a castle. The castle had a gate, and it was going to open when the game began.

This time I had a power armour (Enclave-type) like from the Fallout series, and I remember I "pressed" esc and was looking at the armour's details on a menu. The menu was very plain, and was mostly just drop-down menus. The dominant colour was a cyan-ish blue, not unlike a fluoroscan.

I remember my eldest sibling being out of scene in the dream but commenting about the game and asking me what it was like. At this point, I do remember seeing the "screen" as I was pointing at something, but other than that, the entirety of the dream takes place "inside" the game. I replied something in conversation while still looking at the armour details, when I found some sliders and options I could adjust for abilities.

I noticed there was a little face icon with a number in front of it, 4300, my interpretation of which was that this was how many points I had left to spend (and some abilities took 100,1000,2000, etc). I noticed a regeneration ability that I really wanted to pick (tends to be a personal favourite in games) but then when I was looking for it again, I couldn't find it. I tweaked some other settings I don't recall, such as my max health ability but then the match was starting while I was still looking at the menu, and very quickly, someone else killed me.

Later I respawned or something, somewhere in the map, and I was trying to be sneaky through some dark areas, which remind me now of the Kuva Fortress in Warframe, and ended up running into a few different people; they didn't attack me immediately so I didn't attack them either, and one of them also had a power armour and she (a pretty faced black woman, I saw, as she didn't have the power helmet on) was asking me how I'd managed to configure certain abilities for the armour. She commented on the fact that I was killed at the start while looking at the menu and that whoever had done it was distasteful for doing so. I appreciated her comment.

I remember giving her some advice on the armour abilities, though I don't remember the details. She and a few others, a mix of young (teens?) boys and girls, were at the top landing of a small staircase, to which I walked up to as well; there was a doorway to the right, though I have a vague memory of what was through it; I can't remember it other than being a room with wooden floorboards.

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• There was some other dream fragment I initially remembered, but ended up forgetting while remembering the big dream sequence.
• The two girls that killed me in the game in the first fragment had a cheeky playful attitude and sort of taunted me as they fought.
• The castle doesn't remind me of any particular place, but it had an Unreal Tournament feel to it.
• The transition from being inside the game, to being outside but playing and then back into being inside again was something rare, as that's not really happened before very much.
• The death while in the menu felt a bit too sudden/random; I don't remember hearing a projectile or a weapon firing, but it seemed like I got hit by a one-hit-kill explosion. And I thought the starting area would be safe until left.
• The black woman in power armour seemed to have some sort of strong motivation for being there that wasn't directly related to the game itself, she just had a sort of serious look on her face like she was looking for something in particular.
• I'm making note that while maybe it's not directly related, she was black and had a very meaningful interaction via conversation with me in the dream, and recently in my last DJ entry I've had a lot of black (but the actual colour) dream signs. Oddly enough, it is of some contrast to the last entry that the bit where we stood and talked was brightly lit by a single light from above, and I think the walls were a bright yellow, but it was otherwise dark. But generally speaking, this dream was not even half as dark as the one in my last entry anyway.

Non-dream stuff - I wrote most of this non-lucid dream on a tablet while cooking lunch, as I didn't get a chance to do so before that. Managed to remember a lot of detail, but not some missing bits from transitions and the like, unfortunately.

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Dream:
I remember being some place outside. I was getting a big weapon. The poor memory I have of the outline makes me think of a black bfg. I had a small van like the one my partner has. It was a cloudy and grey day. I put the weapon in the back of the van.

I remember the presence of my middle sibling and I think we spoke at some point, about the weapon. It was very rare and valuable.

Then there's a transition and it implied I took it some place else. I was now in my "lair" and I was a dinosaur/monster like something out of the game Monster Hunter. The weapon was on a rock, safely secured somehow and I remembering seing an orange glow on its outline, like an item pickup in a game.

Then I looked at the top right corner of a visual interface and it said 33,000,000 or so, and it was money I had.

Another big black monster that looked like a Komodo dragon or some sort of lizard appeared and he wanted the weapon. I remember he had a deep voice but I don't remember any words. He wanted to take it by force so we fought for a bit and he tried to attack the things making the weapon secure, without much success. I think he ended up scurrying away.

I then was in a human form and in a black mustang-y type car, seeing it from third person like in many free roam games, and I drove at some speed toward a "waypoint" where I would find the black lizard. I was driving through a city and it was a bit dark at first. I got to a wide river, and I remember I could see an industrial estate type place across the way. I couldn't cross with the car and "remembered" I could summon a jet, so I summoned a bomber jet and got in and took off; the city was more like a complex megapolis now and it was a clear and sunny day.

Somewhat unexpectedly I wasn't controlling the jet too well, and had a few near-hits with buildings; there were drag forces I don't remember noticing before when flying these in games and the tall and branched buildings made it difficult to navigate at high speed but after through the mega city jungle I was arriving over my waypoint so I jumped out of the jet, landing somewhere near my waypoint, which was a bunker entrance. It became night again and there were military personnel that didn't look like they were going to let me inside but they didn't threaten me with their weapons so I rushed through the entrance, into some dark and dimly lit concrete halls. The few lights that existed were weak fluorescent lights.

There wasn't much staff inside this bunker and I seemed to have lost the guards. In this section of the dream I can't actually remember what form I took, possibly alternating between human and lizard form; but I found the black lizard in a small room behind a classroom place that had window panes to an "open" underground area. It was still very dark but there was bright blue light from the large underground area. I assumed some kind of high tech generator though I don't remember looking.

The black lizard was smaller than before, but though he was the same one as before, it was like he was younger now, hence his reduced size. I remember confronting him with more aggression and likewise back at me. I also remember thinking "why couldn't he just pay me a few millions for the weapon", also making me wonder how much money he had, which I assumed to be a lot.

Unfortunately I can't remember what happened next in any detail and the dream ended shortly after.

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Notes (going into a bit of dream interpretation more than usual because of the dream's plot/context):
- To me, the jet, the military staff and bunker are clearly based off my recent experience of playing Just Cause 3. Other elements from games are obviously present, like the weapon.
- In the dream I did expect the jet control to be a lot more intuitive than it ended up being, but the giant branched buildings were very unexpected, because when I was on the ground I never spotted any.

- Black seems to have been a very prevalent colour in this dream.
- Black BFG, black lizard, black car, grey rocks, lots of places of darkness... Of contrast was the white van, the blue or tan jet and the shiny city buildings and blue sky when flying the jet.
- Of note to me is that I immediately referenced the black lizard as male, and the fact that I was a lizard too, of some other colour, probably yellow or orange, indicates to me that the black lizard was likely a part of my Shadow and that I was playing some sort of Hero role.

- I find that the Hero as represented by my less conscious mind tends to be too antagonistic towards the Shadow. This may just be a reflection of Hero portrayals in many typical stories. I personally see the Shadow archetype in general as a poor repressed fellow who needs attention or affection, rather than violence.
- In my childhood pre-sleep lucids, the form of choice was usually a giant black lizard/dinosaur.

- The last part of the dream has the most significance to me and follows a general pattern that my dreams sometimes take;
-- The underground bunker goes down and deeper and gets darker and darker, which is a common process in my dreams, but the presence of a bright blue light at the end when confronting the black lizard in the darkness was somewhat unusual. I do usually have meaningful interactions with dark characters in these dream stages however.
-- The fact that the black lizard was smaller and/or younger at the end makes me think that it is a part of my childhood that I've lost that I haven't been able to regain yet. As a child I was easily angry and aggressive, which was more or less the behaviour of the black lizard.

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Edit from 2 years after having first made this entry (altered some spacings above and corrected typos too):

- As I re-read my dream and the notes, I realised that not once did I actually mention the colour of the black lizard's eyes, but I think due to some "memory corruption" I have mistakenly defined them as being blue. I think my error came from the memory of the light in the final scenes of the dream, where there was that incredible bright blue light beyond the glass.

- My only guess is that my brain linked the two things together to define that the lizard's eyes were blue of the same colour. I think I am fine with this association either way and perhaps while it wasn't the actual colour in the dream, it doesn't really matter seeing as it was my subconscious that made that association to begin with!

- Although I didn't describe it as such in the entry, I do remember that it was a semi-spherical room that the blue energy was contained in. It was a room of very large proportion, definitely based on some sci-fi stuff I've seen.

Non-dream stuff - I have a lucid fragment, that occurred at an unknown time. Then, just a non-lucid dream that I've forgotten details on.

---

Lucid fragment:
It was dim. I see my left hand and count 6 fingers, the extra finger being conjoined with the pinky or ring finger. I have a brief realisation that I'm dreaming, visually the dream starts to disappear into darkness and it feels like I bump into something, and then just the nothingness of unconsciousness until the next dream memory.

Dream fragment:
I remember arriving at a street with my partner, in the car. I suggest we park on some spots close to these terraced houses on the street. The layout is a bit like a corner but it makes more sense in the dream context than it would in waking life. The bit I suggested we park the car on, turns out is for disabled only. In the dream I remember thinking that I really need to do something to get that sorted out, the thought felt like it was more conscious than other parts of the dream.

We park somewhere else a bit further and then I remember approaching the terraced houses, and one of them is actually a bank, and I bought that specific one, apparently. The house door was 60 something, and in the dream context I notice or remember that a friend of ours who's been staying over with us, is living over at door 57, which is around the corner, which again doesn't make sense in a real layout, since it technically would be a different street, the numbers shouldn't add up like that.

I remember being inside the bank-turned-house and noticing glass with red painted stripes, as with a particular bank, and for some reason the house is connected directly to another one that was also from the same bank but hadn't been sold. I remember turning something on or looking for something to eat and feeling like it was odd that I could see a bank agent across the way.

In the dream I was satisfied with how the house looked, though it was pretty bare; mostly shiny tiles and glass.

Later on in the dream I remember walking with my partner again, over some sort of low roof (less than a story high), which was used as a public bridge or something. My mom was at the opposite end, sitting with her legs crossed; as we got closer she looked at me and smiled and told me something. I remember people going past us on the left, using the "bridge". It was day-time through the entire dream, but at first it was cloudy and then it must have been less cloudy near the end because there were more bright streaks.

---

No notes for now, feeling quite tired.

Non-dream stuff - A couple of non-lucid dreams, one long one but mostly only remember fragments either way.

---

Dream fragment:
I remember being in my real bathroom, looking in the mirror; there was a crease in my nose, between where the nostrils are. I pressed one of my fingers and it spread apart like it was a nostril, but it didn't go anywhere, but there was a black dot there, like a seed. In waking life now I can still feel the slight impression of the nose being able to split there.

Dream sequence:
I was in a tower block with my partner. We were renting a room or something and we put quite a bit of hi-fi and computers in the room. I remember the lights were on, both in the room and in the common halls of the building.

Another scene, implied to be later, I was standing by a window with my partner and a dream character, a woman about our age. The window was a large flat panel, or perhaps the glass was missing, but either way the hole in the wall was from foot level to ceiling level and rectangular. Outside I could see other apartment buildings, but smaller, between 3-6 stories. Given the height, we were probably on the 8th story of our building, and I had the feeling it was 20 or more in the dream.

The sky was darkening outside, turning dark orange, and large clouds of orange dust appeared, going up to 6 stories high. The woman asked what the dust was. I said "it's a desert storm". The weather got progressively worse and hurricane-like and my partner mentioned something like "we must be getting the tail of that American tornado". The winds were so strong they blew some of the smaller apartment buildings roofs off and large pieces of concrete and stone were flying around, causing varying amounts of damage. I was not concerned about the building we were in, though it did take some hits from said large pieces of concrete.

Later me and my partner went down, I think we took an elevator down, but it would only have been a couple of floors, as I remember "feeling" where the room was. I had the impression that there were lots of sandy mountains outside now and that some of it may have caved in to the several lower floors. I remember wondering if we should have paid for some sort of contents insurance, as I had concern for our stuff.

Some detail is missing here.

Then I remember another scene where I spoke to a receptionist or something. Then the dream's full context started changing and it started to become something about hunting some sort of unholy creature. I remember the mood colours of the dream went from oranges to cold light blues.

---

Some notes:

• The first dream fragment felt like an obvious "I should have done a RC" moment as soon as I realised I was remembering a dream, and not a vague memory.
• In the tower block, when we were standing by the window, I only remember looking towards the outside, and I didn't look at either my partner or the DC woman at any point.
• The "desert storm" was most likely based on the context of tails of desert winds I've seen in the past. If there's a lot of the dust, the sunlight becomes orange.
• The context for why we were there was never revealed in the dream, but it looked a bit like my native country.

Non-dream stuff - Still waking up generally later than I'd like, which has been messing with dream recall a bit but usually by the time I get up I have to be thinking about other things, so I've probably skipped some days I could have managed some DJ entries. A fragment of a non-lucid, since I've forgotten many details by now.

---

Dream fragment:
I don't remember exactly where I was, but it felt like somewhere in the USA. There was this old wooden house, maybe a farmhouse, kind of "western" style but not quite. The wood was painted white I think and it was day time, clear or mostly clear skies.

The house was going to get pulled down by some people using ropes, I think I gave them a hand with it; it sort of tumbled on its face but without much real damage. Then we got closer to have a look and I think there was a transition or some sort of change, as it felt like I was looking through the windshield of a lorry, but anyway, there were several contents inside and it was a bit dark. Some of these other guys were looking at what they could take, because someone said this didn't belong to anyone, so it was free pickings.

At first I thought they were all going to rush for several objects of more value but that didn't happen and I found myself looking at an electric piano/keyboard, and one of the guys was sitting on its bench. It didn't seem to work for some reason and I noticed some big pan-head screws on the corners of the top; they were so big I just unscrewed them by hand and had a look inside. With the lid off, I was somewhat surprised to read in a cursive font "Pioneer" on the top of the wood that was under the lid. I expected it to be a Roland. (And that I know of, Pioneer never made this sort of thing)

Inside, on the left side there was some sort of "tone control" that went from -2 to +3, but was set to +3. Under it was a bakelite type thing with 2 knobs on it but I'm not sure what it was or did. I commented to this guy sitting at the keyboard that they probably put the tone control at +3 because they used weak transistors which made it sound not very good at 0. I think he asked why and I said "it was probably cheaper for the company this way".

There was more after this, but I seem to have forgotten any details.

---

• In the dream, looking at the keyboard, I had a vague memory from waking life about an amplifier we recently looked at.
• Because I generally only help with electronics and don't do actual repairs myself, my knowledge is somewhat limited, so I am not currently certain if my assessment of the inside of the keyboard would have been correct or appropriate.
• I think all the other people were men, but I have no idea whose the house was.
• It seemed remarkably easy for us to pull down the house, especially because it looked like it didn't rip or anything from foundations or anything. Perhaps this ease of pulling it down would have been a good cue for a RC.
• Despite mentioning transistors, I don't actually remember seeing any circuit boards inside the instrument.

Non-dream stuff - woke up only at roughly 10:20 again and had to answer the door as well. Was having a weird non-lucid, but quite many details lost.

---

Dream:
In the first half of this sequence there were twisty roads down a forested mountain; it was a pine forest. Then I remember seeing a digital map, with a few roads going to a specific place that was being highlighted.

Then I remember me and my partner were in the car but I could see through third-person view and we were getting on a motorway suspended over the ocean and we were speeding; there was at least one truck and a few other cars as we got on the motorway and then it sort of curved for a little bit, before we started going quite fast and the road went straight again, and it turned into aggressive ups and downs (with inclinations greater than 40 degrees). It was night and in the distance there was a sunset, in the horizon, where the road seemed to go.

Then, a cavernous-like place, with dim red light, this was where the map was highlighting before; this was like some nexus point between dimensions, and there were some creatures that chased me, or perhaps more accurately followed me, since they weren't energetically chasing after me. At the end there was a room. A mostly square room, with a skylight, and a door that shut behind me, which I remember looking at; it was a wooden door and it had 3 things like badges or medals hanging off it. I remember they were a dark blue colour.

The skylight took up a large area of the ceiling and some sort of daylight came through, as if it was a cloudy day. This room was the actual nexus, it was somehow implied to me during the dream. Then next to where I was in the room, there was a counter to the right and on it was a miniature dresser, and on that, a black cat's head. The head was alive, simply disembodied, and spoke or something. But the cat was mean somehow, and for some reason I remember rubbing my elbow on the cat's face, watching it do those amusing faces when cats don't like something.

Some part of the dream related to this nexus repeated itself.

---

Notes:

• Because I remember so little detail, the most impressive thing from the dream was perhaps the room with the skylight.
• There were only two doors in that room, one being the one I entered from, and another being on the wall to the left. While the room was square or rectangular, it had a sort of cut at the far right corner, like for a pillar.
• There were other things atop that counter the cat was also on, but I can't remember them. The middle of the room was empty, as I remember seeing most of the daylight on the floor.
• I'm not sure what the (waking) context is for this room and its contents. The cat head is probably the most bizarre thing I've dreamed recently, and simply because I have no context whatsoever for its appearance.
• The context of the suspended motorway and the roads is probably from playing a bit of Fallout last night. I always like the suspended highway lanes in the game universe.
• The cavern's context is probably also from last night, because the last thing I did in the game was go around hunting Deathclaws, which usually live in highly radiated areas, and sometimes dark caves.
• The pine forest reminds me of the greatwood forest I saw when I was in California some years ago.

Non-dream stuff - I'm a bit too tired to write all the details on this entry. Had a long non-lucid that I'll summarise.

---

The dream mostly consisted of me going around several towns around my home town, as I was trying to buy some beer either in a bottle or a can for a friend that was visiting. The context which was also part of the dream beforehand was that there were a few friends visiting at my childhood home but I only had one beer, which is what led me to go out to try and get more. At a few points I wondered if I was gone too long, considering they were only guests, I probably shouldn't have left them on their own.

Even though I went to about 5 different shops over all the towns, nobody had any beer at all, unbelievably. I remember I did find a load of cans at a shop, and I bought them, only to realise later they were some sort of vanilla coke cans. I still had the impression they were beers, which made me wonder since when did coca-cola do beer... A bit later I met a dream character which in the dream context was my friend. He had an extremely overburdened backpack and he was a bit shorter than me and bald. We went separate ways but waved as we did. I continued searching for beer after that.

I don't remember at what point the dream ended exactly.

---

Notes:

• The fact that beer was being that difficult to find should perhaps at least have made me wonder if such a situation could happen on a normal day, though for some reason the time of day in the dream felt like it was relevant.
• The fact that I went over so many towns should have been more surprising, since I only walked from place to place, and in the dream I didn't have my typical fatigue in any normal sense.
• Additionally, I typically don't drink alcohol at all (some drinks make me feel very ill within a few minutes) but some beers are alright to have and I did find myself with a craving for a beer during the dream, probably because it's been a few months since I last tasted any.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at about 8:30 again, so I know that my alarm is being able to wake me up again. Still didn't have enough willpower to not stay in bed and slept another 2 hours again. Remember one of the non-lucids.

---

Dream sequence:
I remember being in this office/computer room as I am in now to write this DJ, or perhaps a similar room. I remember then being in the kitchen and I was talking to my partner about an appointment I (actually) have next week. In the dream the appointment's location was somewhere in Illinois.

My partner was somewhat upset because we hadn't made any preparations at all and it was actually impossible for us to drive there. We would need to go an a 6-hour flight (which is inconsistent with the real distance, which would take longer) and then there was some kind of transition.

I was now in a plane, which actually looked like it had a fair bit of room, but the plane wasn't on an airport. It looked more like it was in the middle of a town and people were all waiting for take-off. The plane had a layout I can't really explain or detail, but it was not at all like it should have been. Some people were complaining that things were falling apart, and I think my dad was there commenting that it was fine and that actually those parts were not crucial.

A man next to me spoke in my native language and voiced his own concerns, and I tried to tell him that it probably really was nothing to worry about. I remember he had a drink in a plastic cup and then behind me there was some sort of drink dispenser like a water cooler, with more of said plastic cups in a slot. The cups were a blue-hued non-transparent grey. The light coming in through the windows was orange-ish, in a way that implied it was early morning, likely at sunrise.

Then I remember being outside, either walking around or being driven somewhere when I pass the plane, which is sitting on a street, wingless I think, next to some terraced houses. The plane didn't look like it crashed or anything; it was just sitting there.

I know I interacted with someone else after that but I can't remember any more details specifically now.

---

Notes:

• I can't remember having many (if any) dreams with planes.
• The dream context of "travel" is a consistent theme across some of my most common dreamsigns however.
• It's likely that I had this dream because last night my parents wanted to speak to me and I was feeling too tired so I didn't speak to them; and they presumably wanted to talk about a trip to where they live, which I really didn't feel like thinking about.
• In dreams I don't particularly feel stressed with travel, but in the waking world, traveling can feel stressful for me if it involves large gathering hubs or if it's highly disruptive to day-to-day life (i.e. if it's a trip away for a considerable amount of time).
• The way my partner was upset at me about the trip was a bit different to how the reaction would have been in the waking world, which might still have been slightly cross but more forgiving.
• I still find it odd that even though in the dream I was at locations in the house, I never did a reality check in the dream. Lately I do RCs quite often, even when in the house, so it seems odd that the "habit" of simply checking reality anyway doesn't even occur.

Non-dream stuff - woke up at around 8:30 with the normal alarm but still fell asleep and woke up again about 2 hours later. Some non-lucid dream fragments from both awakenings persisted.

---

Fragment:
I was in a mountainous area, and there was a town or something. There were rocky overhangs and the landscape looked like something I'd only see in games in general; the stone was mostly all like limestone, which reminds me now of an area in Dark Souls III. It was a bright and clear day.

I remember fighting some sort of blue dragon, not unlike some of the Rathians in Monster Hunter. It got tired or was scared off and flew away eventually.

Fragment:
I remember briefly a subway train station, similar to the last one I've dreamt of, but in no particular way other than how it felt; the lighting was perhaps a bit dim, like the other one. Then a train was arriving and it looked full-ish on some carriages and there were plenty of people on the platform; but I chose to go to a carriage that was not as close to me and it was much emptier.

The seats were in groups of 5, with their backs toward the windows. The seats were low and sort of cushioned. I was about to sit down when a woman on this row of seats said to me "could you please not sit down on these two", gesticulating at the particular seats; so I sat on the 2nd seat of the row, and she was sat on the 4th. She said something like "I'm sorry" and "... my assessment ...", the implication being it was some sort of benefits assessment. Somehow I knew she had children though they were certainly not here. I'm sure the train had set off at this point but I don't remember noises, come to think of it.

Fragment:
I was in some version or another of World of Warcraft and I was in a player group. The group consisted solely of my character, which name I don't remember reading, and another player/character whose character name was simply "Marshal". My character was a warrior, and the other player was another plate-wearing class, maybe a paladin; both characters were human.

We entered an Arathi Basin battleground together, but a lot of it looked subtly different; I remember both me and the other guy had full grand marshal equipment (which is the highest PvP rank for the Alliance faction), and I had two of the great-swords. We went separate ways but I sort of patrolled on my mount around the central blacksmith (which in the dream was more like a lumber mill) and the gold mine.

Oddly enough, despite being in a battleground, I don't remember seeing any enemies, though I know that our team was fighting some on the other side of the map.

---

Some notes:

• Subway train stations are one of my most obvious dreamsigns, but I always seem to miss them. Part of it is because I don't expect them to come up, even though they are fairly common, but another part of it is that whenever they do show up, I had not set any sort of intention to recognise them as a dream-sign. They are a dead giveaway of the dream-state these days because I don't use the subway where I live (because there isn't one).
• I can't remember what the woman in the train looked like exactly; but she looked local to where I live. I remember feeling sorry or perhaps worried for her. Recently a friend of ours had an appointment for an assessment for benefits, so perhaps part of the context here is because of that.
• I haven't played WoW in quite a while now, and truthfully I don't think I will play it much more in the future; but I played the older versions a lot when I was younger and my dreams about the game are invariably about some sort of nostalgic feeling of those old times.
• I never attained the highest PvP rank in the classic game, but my eldest sibling nearly did.

Non-dream stuff - Woke up with the earlier alarms, around 8:30 and then let the alarm repeat itself every so often, but ended up snoozing a bit and got up at 9:50. Remember the last part of a non-lucid.

---

Dream fragment:
It's difficult to remember what came before, because I went through a door, I think the front door of a very small terraced house. Inside it was dark but there was daylight from a window.

Immediately inside there were stairs that went either up or down, and I decide to go down, where it was darker and there were no windows. The stairwell was cramped and it felt like an old building for that reason alone. Eventually at the bottom there was a room with a light. This was a shop, even if a very small one, as this room was no bigger than a pantry and it is implied by dream context to be a basement; a man was at the counter and there was someone else browsing. There were metal shelves and wooden crates with things in them.

There were all sorts of things, I remember thinking it was a drug store at first. I saw some melatonin and other drugs I didn't recognise. I did not remember to question the dream's reality or context. As I looked around the room became bigger and the layout changed; there were a window or two now and toward one corner there were weapons; I remember moving them carefully to the side since I wanted to get past, further into the corner. I remarked on each weapon as I moved them; "this looks like a pillum... this a javelin...".

When they were out of the way I got into the corner and there was a big cabinet that didn't interest me, and there was a narrow piece of wood furniture that almost looked like a column but was some sort of display cabinet. The other cabinet I wasn't interested in, the other man in the shop was interested in it. I think I either somehow passed it to him or he came to get it, as it was now next to the counter, and inside the cabinet were vinyls.

Not just any vinyls however, the boxes' covers were decorated in a 20s or 40s style and they were all children's stories. Then I noticed there was a vinyl player from the 70s or 80s next to the cabinet now and the man was trying them out; I could see the vinyl under the perspex lid. Somehow, the vinyls produced images. I remember seeing animated cartoons of whatever the stories were. I liked the vinyl boxes because they were very colourful; with red or blue trims.

---

Notes:

• I've never had a sleep related supplement or the like simply appear in a dream like the melatonin did, so it feels a bit silly that I didn't notice it, especially given that currently, for me to get melatonin I have to ask my parents for it.
• The weapons didn't look old; in fact the tips were in pristine condition and the wooden handles were nicely oiled.
• The cabinet that didn't interest me looked old and dilapidated; it was one of the many lifeless-looking objects in the room that seemed to have little colour to them.
• I'm starting to realise there may be a pattern to my interaction with stairs when they appear in dreams. Often I choose to go down, and when I choose to go down, it does tend to get darker and it tends to feel like it takes a long time. Stairs going down generally seem longer than stairs going up in my dreams.