side notes

Completely non-dream stuff:

Just making a little note here, to remind myself that the past couple of nights I haven't been able to recall my dreams, for no particular apparent reason, other than the fact that my sleep is naturally poor.

Last night I compromised with my partner and made the radio stop coming on in the morning and I turn it back on for him after I've gotten up from bed (it's helpful for him to wake up). So we will see if this helps improve dream recall, as the voices from the radio were quickly making me forget details on some mornings, if it wasn't quiet enough.

However, over the last few days, since I've started keeping this DJ and reading the dreams of others, I have started to remember to do RCs in waking life more often, so that's a positive.

Non-dream stuff: I woke up at 8 with the auto radio which was a little too loud, got up and turned it off, as I wanted to but also because my partner asked me to; Got back in bed and forgot any potential dream recall - stayed in bed for 40 minutes and had a small dream fragment even though I wasn't quite asleep; I knotted two fingers and went and start tea for myself and my partner, coming back up to start drafting this text and then going back down to finish the tea and bring it up, at which point I remembered the second dream fragment.

---

Fragment 1:

We were in my parent's house and my partner was in the bedroom that used to be my parents (but in waking life these days that bedroom is rented out). I remember seeing him get dressed. I was at the entry hall and looking into my old bedroom (again, rented out in waking life now), suddenly a I see a landline phone (the one that's right here in this room in waking life) is receiving a call, we don't answer and a message is left and plays out from the answering machine "What the hell ya playing at mate? You can't do this!". I knew the voice but the first name and last name initials were detected by the answering machine; it was my partner's sibling's partner (sorry for the confusion) whom we will just call DF.

I could see my partner's face go sort of "uugh not this" and I was thinking to myself "what the hell was DF on about". My partner came through and we went into my old bedroom with the landline phone and I remember we commented on it to each other, but can't remember words in detail.

We walked into the balcony that is outside my bedroom and I could feel some annoyance off my partner. It was day, probably mid/late morning, given the sun's position. The dream ended here, more or less.

Fragment 2:

I was playing WoW, my view being from the character perspective mostly, on a Shaman character of mine I think, and was doing this old raid by myself called Molten Core. That's kind of all I remember.

---

Some notes:

• Though Fragment 1 wasn't a nightmare or a bad dream, it could have turned into a bad dream if I got too hot in my real bed; this is very typical if I get too hot in bed, which I was starting to.
• DF doesn't know our landline number, so he wouldn't be able to call it. My partner's sibling probably doesn't know it either. I should have questioned things a bit.
• In the dream, and on waking, I knew the call was in reference to giving them some furniture that we haven't given them yet. The fact that DF was having this reaction over something this small was a confirmation of a bad set of behaviours DF has.
• There seemed to be noone else at the house, not even my dog (who lives with my parents).
• Even though I could see my partner get dressed and go "ugh", this was not through direct vision. This was camera-like perception, as from the entry hall I could not directly see my partner, but I could directly see the landline. This could have been a good prompt for a RC.
• Given the general feeling of temperature and humidity in the air (given by the sunlight through the air), I'd say the dream actually took place in Spring, as things looked too green and it wasn't excessively hot. Again this could have been a good prompt for a RC but a more prominent dream sign is that we were in my native country at all, which won't happen for some months.
• The WoW dream fragment was one of the ones from when I woke up at 8, and I remember very little other than killing some bosses and getting the usual loot. Being so "inside" the game is a dream sign that I typically forget to think on during dreams. See my general notes.
• It is also worth noting for readers that when I make references to my parent's house to keep in mind that it's actually a flat in a 9 story-building. 10, if you count ground floor.

Non-dream stuff; I was only aware of waking up at about 9, but I know I was awake before that. The dream I had in my memory as I woke up, I quickly forgot, by feeling the need to sit up and crack my neck and back, yet I somehow still remembered some earlier, non-lucid, dream fragments:

---

Dream fragments:
I remember being in a room, like at my parent's house, or my childhood home, but I can't say I remember the room in detail; it was one of the rooms at the back of the house and it was dark (but I didn't have the impression it was night). I was aware of a cat, black and white I think and there was a catfish or something... I distinctly remember the cat playing with the catfish and the catfish meowing; at first I was concerned for the fish somehow, and I remember turning my attention to something else and when I looked back again the catfish was gone, the implication being that the cat ate it. Suddenly it felt like the cat was aggressive and I remember trying to claw me; I think my instinctive responce was to smack it.

In another fragment, I simply remember my two siblings being present. Possibly in a corridor leading to some stairs or with stairs intersecting it.

Another fragment, I remember being aware of being back in my native country, with some sort of dream-generated friends or acquaintances in the dream and going up some dream-generated stairs, practically crawling up them, because in this dream my fear of heights seemed much greater. The stairs now remind me of something that Gaudi might have made, twisty, curly, yellow. I remember saying "I hate this country's stairs", in reference to the fact that my own native country has plenty of hilly cities and towns, with plenty of stairs.

I kept climbing the stairs and eventually reached a tier where there were floating platforms. Some sort of children were here, as if they played here everyday and one said to me "if you want to get to the other side, I'm afraid jumping is the only way". I looked around for another option, hanging close to the floor due to my fear, and indeed there was no choice.

The fall was a big one, I knew this. Someone from behind me, one of the dream friends said something like "we're 50 stories high, don't look down!" and I think I told them to shut up, that I knew, and I strongly resisted the urge to look down and simply hopped to the first small stone platform that was floating above this gap. The floating stone platforms were different shapes, some hexagons, some circles. I hopped to the next one, closest to a doorway on the opposite side of where I first arrived at this tier. I don't remember going through.



In another fragment, perhaps related to the last, I remember something in space, with asteroids and a space base, but not much else, unfortunately. This was one of the dreams I forgot by sitting up.

---

Notes:

• Last night, when I went outside to our yard I saw one of our neighbour's cats sitting on the wall, and it is black and white and has a bell; it scurries off when it sees us, even though the cat is the one choosing to come into our yard.
• In the platform jumping area, the abyss or gap or whatever was actually quite small, as I realised by hopping to each platform; the platforms felt decidedly steady despite their floating nature. The initial apprehensive nature of my fear likely made the gaps seem much wider at first, especially considering a fall implied death, and therefore, great pain in the last seconds.
• It is of note that I hate many platforming games, as usually the combat mechanics annoy me to great deal, such as Super Mario.
• Although my fear of heights varies greatly in waking life, it usually comes before I'm at the location, because of the anticipation of the situation; whereas in the dream the onset was only sudden once I was on the stairs.
• I'm fairly certain these fragments were actually linked by some transition, but I cannot remember it.
• As the stairs went up, there were buildings to either side, but on the right there was a gap between the stairs and the buildings, whereas on the left side they were adjoined. There were no doors at all at any point. In my native country the stairs would be less steep (possibly made steeper by fear) and there would be tiers and doors every so often.
• The fact that I and my siblings were present all in one room, these days, is not statistically likely. This should have made me question reality.
• The fact the catfish meowed should have made me RC, because I realised that it was odd, that catfish don't meow.

Edit: added a very rough 3D scene I quickly made (10-15mins) of the stairs dream scene.

Non-dream stuff: Woke up at 8, with the usual alarms and auto radio. Could remember a dream fragment but tried too hard to remember it so decided instead to set another alarm for 9:30 and try to sleep more. Woke up at 9:30 and remembered a dream but was fading a little.

Non-lucid dream fragment, going backwards:

4: Starting from the end of the dream, I remember some frozen strips of pork. I know we were at some bigger and altered version of my partner's dad's house. I was going to cook them over a fire and I took a little strip off and ate it raw - very quickly I thought "Crap, you can't eat raw pork, what the hell am I doing? This is how you can get worms..." but then I also (conveniently...) remembered this was bacon, which in many cases can be eaten "raw" because of the process to make it. This is the last portion of the dream before I woke up.

3: I remember walking around the house before that, looking for my partner. It was strange, I was half-aware that this was a dream because I remember thinking that this was exactly like another time as I opened some doors and went through the crooked and narrow halls. I remember in the dream context there were some doors that unleashed swarms of spiders (dream memory someone had told me) but they were already open and my dream self knew which these were.

2: Before that, I can't remember if I was in a different place, but I think I was looking at a screen (but it feels like I wasn't) with my partner and there was a museum and a large limestone statue of someone like David the Thinker or Atlas, carrying the world. On the statue however, was an old friend of mine who I'd had a crush on in waking life; she was mostly naked apart from some (to me) weird leather laces around her limbs and pelvis; she was posing on or against the statue in a heroic pose, for a photo or something, as she was looking up and away, smiling.

1: And finally the earliest thing I can remember vaguely is that there was some sort of room. An office room maybe.

---

Some notes:

• My old school friend should have been a good cue of a dream sign; not only was she someone that is simply not present in my life at all anymore, she was in a very odd situation. The leather lace stuff might have been because in waking life I remember she told me that she self-harmed. As a kid I didn't think too much about that, actually.
• The pose my old school friend was taking, was a behaviour accurate to her real personality, when I knew her anyway.
• In my partner's dad's house, I was aware of my partner being there, and do vaguely remember seeing him at some point.
• The thing with the bacon should have made me do a RC because from one moment to another I decided it was fine, when I was almost panicking for doing something so stupid initially.
• Waking life note: Must remember to, after doing something stupid, even if it's fine afterwards, do a RC.
• The spider swarm releasing doors, though I wasn't afraid of them, I was wary of them, even open. I felt like the spiders were moving around but I carried on with walking through the house.
• I remember there was a skylight in one of the corridors in the dream; in reality there is no skylight at all in that house.

Just got up, went into our computer room, kept the curtains closed and started my computer and wrote this. Two non-lucid dream sequences, mostly fragmented:

---

First sequence:

In the first dream I was in a "room" that was like a garden, it was a room in the sense that it was some sort of partition; I remember something like greek pillars covered in vines and grassy ground. In this room, there was "me", my partner from waking life, a friend of ours and a slim man in a suit; the three of us approached the man, as he was here to show us something and as we did or perhaps he was already doing it, he was levitating this large latticed purple orb, made of stone or gemstone, between his two hands, one hand above, one hand below; the orb floated up and down gently.

I can't tell if it was day or night but everything looked somewhat "dark".

At first my partner (who isn't really into any stuff like this) put his hand out toward the orb and closed his eyes and was silent; then our friend did and then I did. I could sense no special energy from the orb or the man: the orb was ordinary, regardless of any surreal properties. I stopped and walked away toward a door under a lowered roof, then I think our friend did too and I opened the door and there were two more doors to either side of a tiny partition and I opened another and went into a large room, like a conference room; there were a dozen men and women at the conference table, and they were waiting for us. I remember one of them asking what were we waiting for, why hadn't we all come in? Or something to this effect. I explained we wouldn't be a minute and I peeked out to see my partner still holding his hand at the orb and called him and he opened his eyes and walked away from the mysterious man, and the conference members were not keen on letting this man in.

I remember my partner said that the orb felt like it had the energy of the universe or some such; which I interpreted as: it feels the exact same as any ordinary object, because it did to me.

As we were all in now, apart from the orb man, one of the older men said "close the doors, lift the barriers" and some fake wall barriers emerged from some slots on the floor next to the doors, sealing the room. I remember this conference room had some windows, and had too much room even for just this single conference table. This all had a very Illuminati type feeling to me, even in the dream.

Second sequence:

I'm not sure where this sequence starts or if it carried over from the last one, but this one is temporally fragmented. I remember the last part first: I was at a waterpark with my partner and I remember thinking when I was talking to someone, I think a woman, that I always wanted to go to one. We were sort of leaning back against a wall of this single-story building, a large square-ish building as far as my dream self knew, we were waiting for something, I think more members of our group, which I think included my family. I remember as I waited, I was messing around, like lifting myself up by putting my hands against two lower walls and pushing myself up and I was also looking around the waterpark and outside of it.

I saw some skyscrapers in the city. One was probably 30 stories, and then another, fancier, office building behind it was something between 60 or 70, I guessed. I pondered as I thought it was so strange that such a small difference in stories could make up for so much more height. The sky was blue and clear and it was certainly daytime.

I think our group arrived and we walked around the square building and we were looking for a restaurant or something. We all went into this small one and as everyone was going in I could see on a digital interface (inside my head) that another nearby restaurant that was related to this one was much busier at the moment, and I walked up to one of the staff members that was headed for the loo and said to him like "want me to get some more people over from [indecipherable] restaurant?"; he looked at me approvingly but didn't answer and went in the bathroom; I turned away and walked out and headed for the other restaurant. This fragment ends here.

Another fragment, before this last one, in dream time:

I was standing with my partner in a garden at this waterpark; there were white painted wooden fences and it was a clear blue sky day, as it would still be later. My dream self knew this garden was part of an accommodation we were staying in, part of the park's premises. I remember hearing a woman's voice, she was praying, loudly, and I commented to my partner "surely she can keep her voice down a little?"; he shrugged and looked in the distance, resting his arms on this wooden fence. Her praying went on for some time, and I thought about how I had never prayed loudly in my life except when asked to, and even then, barely so. And yet this woman was praying to be heard by all, without concern of being judged or criticised for doing so.

I remember my dream self knew there sprinklers in the gardens but they had not yet been on, though the grass looked perfectly lush and perfectly trimmed.

Can't recall more fragments.

---

Notes:

• I have had curiosity about going to waterparks, but I have certainly never had the open desire of "always wanting to go to one", so this could have been a thought I could have realised was odd.

• Both dreams, the whole places were dream-generated, in their entirety. The only "exception" being that the accommodation and its garden in the last fragment very closely resembled the type of thing my family used to go to holiday for, when I was a kid.

• In the dream I could clearly hear the woman's prayers but I had forgotten all of it by the time I woke up. It felt important to my dream self to remember what she was praying.

• In the first dream, the "Illuminati" conference was probably partly based off the imagined world from the first Deus Ex Machina games, as that is one of the most prominent visual culture references I have for the subject. I do not know why my dream self, which was like "me", was part of it. And if there were a dozen people in the room, with the 3 of us walking into the room, that would make 15 - in the game's world it is implied there are 12 members only.

• The floating purple orb really had no special feel to it; it felt more mechanical and part of nature than anything else, as I truly did not feel any special energy from it. The man was peculiar for mostly just standing there, firmly, in what looked like a tophat and an old style suit, simply "presenting" the orb. Perhaps he and the orb were merely part of the garden, in the same way as the grass and vines.

• Tip/Memory Note: I remember much less on getting up than what I wrote now, but because of the way memory works it's easier to remember things like a dream in sequence, so as you start from the beginning or end it becomes easier to recall more of the memorable parts if you think it out and through. This is also true for your waking life memories: if you are in a room and don't remember the recent past, you go backwards in your memory of living the last moments. If you pay enough attention through most of the day, you can recall an entire day this way, sometimes more.

Not dream: I woke up earlier than usual, woken up by our friend staying over and remember dreaming something, but in no detail, and soon fell asleep again. Woke up at the normal time and stayed in bed for 45 minutes, seeing whether I'd sleep more and dream again or not. I didn't but remembered some dream fragments and got up. I knotted two of my fingers as I've seen a friend do, to remember the fragments and my intention as I go through doorways in the house, as I first go downstairs to make tea and then come back up to write my fragments as follow:

---

Fragment 1 (non-lucid):
I was playing a special player vs player mode in a game I'd been playing recently in waking life, where I'd throw bombs at other players and vice versa, with the objective of making each other fall off the platforms until only one of us was left. What was different from the real game was that I was able to use my character's swords as well in this game mode.

Fragment 2 (non-lucid):
I remember talking to old friends and they were inviting me over to their estate across the river; in the dream I had a memory of what the estate was like, but I felt like something was off, as I also didn't remember this estate actually being so big. How could I remember and not remember at the same time? The "memory" was vivid, so I think that in the dream it's more like I was actually at the estate and that's what made me question it a bit.

---

Notes:

• In waking life, there is a phenomenon that when you go through a doorway, your mind forgets current thoughts and changes how it thinks. I think I remember reading that it is believed this had to do with contextual adaptation, before humans made so many artificial thresholds themselves, such as going from the tundra to the plains and to the desert and so on. Interestingly in dreams, doorways and thresholds in general can have very literal scene changes beyond them. For me, anyway, they do.
• Keeping fingers knotted like this causes a good deal of pain, especially since my joints are hypermobile, but focusing on this lets me focus on the intention I set when I started doing it, even when I go through thresholds, as I've observed my friend do. I don't know the mechanic behind this, but it just seems to work.
• The friends from my second fragment are like extended family, but I rarely see them anymore, and in fact, in waking life it is impossible for me to casually see or hear about them, because I no longer live in the same country, so in my dream I was back in my native country, and should have realised this to be unusual.